After a monthlong honeymoon for the G.O.P. at the start of President Trump’s term, lawmakers are confronting a groundswell of fear and disaffection in districts around the country.
Representative Pete Sessions fielded a barrage of frustration from constituents at a town-hall meeting in Trinity, Texas, on Saturday.Credit…Mark Felix for The New York Times
Robert Jimison, who covers Congress, reported from Trinity County in the 17th Congressional District of Texas.
Feb. 23, 2025
Some came with complaints about Elon Musk, President Trump’s billionaire ally who is carrying out an assault on the federal bureaucracy. Others demanded guarantees that Republicans in Congress would not raid the social safety net. Still others chided the G.O.P. to push back against Mr. Trump’s moves to trample the constitutional power of Congress.
When Representative Pete Sessions, Republican of Texas, arrived at a crowded community center on Saturday in the small rural town of Trinity in East Texas, he came prepared to deliver a routine update on the administration’s first month in office. Instead, he fielded a barrage of frustration and anger from constituents questioning Mr. Trump’s agenda and his tactics — and pressing Mr. Sessions and his colleagues on Capitol Hill to do something about it.
“The executive can only enforce laws passed by Congress; they cannot make laws,” said Debra Norris, a lawyer who lives in Huntsville, arguing that the mass layoffs and agency closures Mr. Musk has spearheaded were unconstitutional. “When are you going to wrest control back from the executive and stop hurting your constituents?”
“When are you going to wrest control back from the executive?” Debra Norris, a lawyer who lives in Huntsville, asked Mr. Sessions.Credit…Mark Felix for The New York Times
Louis Smith, a veteran who lives in East Texas, told Mr. Sessions that he agreed with the effort to root out excessive spending, but he criticized the way it was being handled and presented to the public.
“I like what you’re saying, but you need to tell more people,” Mr. Smith said. “The guy in South Africa is not doing you any good — he’s hurting you more than he’s helping,” he added, referring to Mr. Musk and drawing nods and applause from many in the room.
Many of the most vocal complaints came from participants who identified themselves as Democrats, but a number of questions pressing Mr. Sessions and others around the country came from Republican voters. During a telephone town hall with Representative Stephanie Bice in Oklahoma, a man who identified himself as a Republican and retired U.S. Army officer voiced frustration over potential cuts to veterans benefits.
“How can you tell me that DOGE with some college whiz kids from a computer terminal in Washington, D.C., without even getting into the field, after about a week or maybe two, have determined that it’s OK to cut veterans benefits?” the man asked.
Beyond town halls, some Democrats have organized a number of protests outside the offices of vulnerable Republicans. More than a hundred demonstrators rallied outside the New York district office of Representative Mike Lawler. Elected Democrats are also facing fury from within the ranks of their party. A group of voters held closed-door meetings with members from the office of Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, after a demonstration at his New York offices.
Some of the scenes recalled the raucous town-hall meetings of 2009 that heralded the rise of the ultraconservative Tea Party, where throngs of voters showed up protesting President Barack Obama’s health care law and railed against government debt and taxes. It is not yet clear whether the current backlash will persist or reach the same intensity as it did back then. But the tenor of the sessions suggests that, after a brief honeymoon period for Mr. Trump and Republicans at the start of their governing trifecta, voters beginning to digest the effects of their agenda may be starting to sour on it.
Representative Rich McCormick, a Republican from Georgia, also faced shouts and jeers from constituents at a meeting last week.Credit…Valerie Plesch for The New York Times
Mr. Sessions, who was first elected to Congress nearly three decades ago and represents a solidly Republican district, appeared unfazed by the disruptions on Saturday. Some audience members laughed at him and retorted with hushed but audible expletives when he spoke about his support of some of Mr. Trump’s policy proposals and early actions.
And some of his constituents were plainly pleased by what they had seen so far from the new all-Republican team controlling the White House and both chambers of Congress. Several cheered an executive order barring transgender women and girls from participating in school athletic programs designated for female students, applauded plans to shrink the Department of Education and welcomed calls from Mr. Sessions to end remote work flexibility for federal employees.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we are going to have a reduction in force,” Mr. Sessions told the crowd.
And while many in the room voiced displeasure over the sweeping changes underway in Washington, some were agitating for bolder action to address what they called government corruption — not for pumping the brakes.
As Mr. Sessions spoke about the administration’s efforts to streamline bureaucracy and root out wasteful spending, shouts erupted.
“Take care of it, Congressman,” one woman said, interrupting him.
“Do something about it,” another man added.
One man’s voice rose above the others railing against nongovernmental organizations that receive federal money: “They’re laundering money to NGOs. Who’s in jail?”
Still, much of the pressure came from constituents concerned about how he might be enabling Mr. Trump to enact policies that could hurt them.
Mr. Sessions did not promise that Social Security would be insulated from cuts when pressed by John Watt, left.Credit…Mark Felix for The New York Times
John Watt, the chairman of the Democratic Party in nearby Nacogdoches County, asked for guarantees from the congressman that he would oppose any cuts to Social Security if Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk turned their attention to the entitlement program.
“Will you be courageous enough to stand up to them?” Mr. Watt asked.
Mr. Sessions spoke at length about his support for the program, but said he could not promise it would be insulated from the blunt cuts Republicans in Washington are seeking across the government. Instead, he said he supported a comprehensive audit of the program that could result in some cuts.
“I’m not going to tell you I will never touch Social Security,” Mr. Sessions said, parting ways with Mr. Trump, who campaigned saying he never would. “What I will tell you is that I believe we’re going to do for the first time in years a top-to-bottom review of that. And I will come back, and I will do a town-hall meeting in your county and place myself before you and let you know about the options. But I don’t know what they’re proposing right now.”
It was a nod to the uncertainty surrounding the Republican budget plan, even as House leaders hope to hold a vote on it within days. Already, the level of cuts they are contemplating to Medicaid has drawn resistance from some G.O.P. lawmakers whose constituents depend heavily on the program, raising questions about whether they will have the votes to pass their blueprint at all.
The public pushback could further complicate that debate, as well as efforts to reach a spending agreement as lawmakers return to Washington this week with less than three weeks to avert a government shutdown.
The tenor of the town-hall meetings, including Mr. Sessions’s, suggested that voters were beginning to digest the effects of the Republican agenda.Credit…Mark Felix for The New York Times
Republicans generally hold fewer in-person open town halls than their Democratic counterparts, opting instead for more controlled settings, such as telephone town halls, that minimize the risk of public confrontations. But even before last week, they had begun hearing frustration from voters, who have also expressed their discontent by flooding the phones of congressional offices.
With their already narrow majority in the House, G.O.P. lawmakers are in a fragile position. A voter backlash could sweep out some of their most vulnerable members in midterm elections next year. But the pushback in recent days has come not only in highly competitive districts but also in deeply Republican ones, suggesting a broader problem for the party.
And there is little sign that Mr. Trump is letting up. On Saturday, Mr. Trump said in a social media post that Mr. Musk “is doing a great job, but I would like to see him be more aggressive.” Mr. Musk responded by sending government employees emails that he said were “requesting to understand what they got done last week. Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”
GOP lawmakers expected to vote soon on slashing the insurance program for low-income people represent tens of millions reliant on it.
Louis Smith, a veteran who lives in East Texas, told Mr. Sessions that he agreed with the effort to root out excessive spending, but he criticized the way it was being handled and presented to the public.
“I like what you’re saying, but you need to tell more people,” Mr. Smith said. “The guy in South Africa is not doing you any good — he’s hurting you more than he’s helping,” he added, referring to Mr. Musk and drawing nods and applause from many in the room.
“I like what you’re saying, but you need to tell more people,” Mr. Smith said. “The guy in South Africa is not doing you any good — he’s hurting you more than he’s helping,” he added, referring to Mr. Musk and drawing nods and applause from many in the room.
Many of the most vocal complaints came from participants who identified themselves as Democrats, but a number of questions pressing Mr. Sessions and others around the country came from Republican voters. During a telephone town hall with Representative Stephanie Bice in Oklahoma, a man who identified himself as a Republican and retired U.S. Army officer voiced frustration over potential cuts to veterans benefits.
“How can you tell me that DOGE with some college whiz kids from a computer terminal in Washington, D.C., without even getting into the field, after about a week or maybe two, have determined that it’s OK to cut veterans benefits?” the man asked.
Beyond town halls, some Democrats have organized a number of protests outside the offices of vulnerable Republicans. More than a hundred demonstrators rallied outside the New York district office of Representative Mike Lawler. Elected Democrats are also facing fury from within the ranks of their party. A group of voters held closed-door meetings with members from the office of Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, after a demonstration at his New York offices.
Some of the scenes recalled the raucous town-hall meetings of 2009 that heralded the rise of the ultraconservative Tea Party, where throngs of voters showed up protesting President Barack Obama’s health care law and railed against government debt and taxes. It is not yet clear whether the current backlash will persist or reach the same intensity as it did back then. But the tenor of the sessions suggests that, after a brief honeymoon period for Mr. Trump and Republicans at the start of their governing trifecta, voters beginning to digest the effects of their agenda may be starting to sour on it.
Representative Rich McCormick, a Republican from Georgia, also faced shouts and jeers from constituents at a meeting last week.Credit…Valerie Plesch for The New York Times
Mr. Sessions, who was first elected to Congress nearly three decades ago and represents a solidly Republican district, appeared unfazed by the disruptions on Saturday. Some audience members laughed at him and retorted with hushed but audible expletives when he spoke about his support of some of Mr. Trump’s policy proposals and early actions.
And some of his constituents were plainly pleased by what they had seen so far from the new all-Republican team controlling the White House and both chambers of Congress. Several cheered an executive order barring transgender women and girls from participating in school athletic programs designated for female students, applauded plans to shrink the Department of Education and welcomed calls from Mr. Sessions to end remote work flexibility for federal employees.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we are going to have a reduction in force,” Mr. Sessions told the crowd.
And while many in the room voiced displeasure over the sweeping changes underway in Washington, some were agitating for bolder action to address what they called government corruption — not for pumping the brakes.
As Mr. Sessions spoke about the administration’s efforts to streamline bureaucracy and root out wasteful spending, shouts erupted.
“Take care of it, Congressman,” one woman said, interrupting him.
“Do something about it,” another man added.
One man’s voice rose above the others railing against nongovernmental organizations that receive federal money: “They’re laundering money to NGOs. Who’s in jail?”
Still, much of the pressure came from constituents concerned about how he might be enabling Mr. Trump to enact policies that could hurt them.
Mr. Sessions did not promise that Social Security would be insulated from cuts when pressed by John Watt, left.Credit…Mark Felix for The New York Times
John Watt, the chairman of the Democratic Party in nearby Nacogdoches County, asked for guarantees from the congressman that he would oppose any cuts to Social Security if Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk turned their attention to the entitlement program.
“Will you be courageous enough to stand up to them?” Mr. Watt asked.
Mr. Sessions spoke at length about his support for the program, but said he could not promise it would be insulated from the blunt cuts Republicans in Washington are seeking across the government. Instead, he said he supported a comprehensive audit of the program that could result in some cuts.
“I’m not going to tell you I will never touch Social Security,” Mr. Sessions said, parting ways with Mr. Trump, who campaigned saying he never would. “What I will tell you is that I believe we’re going to do for the first time in years a top-to-bottom review of that. And I will come back, and I will do a town-hall meeting in your county and place myself before you and let you know about the options. But I don’t know what they’re proposing right now.”
It was a nod to the uncertainty surrounding the Republican budget plan, even as House leaders hope to hold a vote on it within days. Already, the level of cuts they are contemplating to Medicaid has drawn resistance from some G.O.P. lawmakers whose constituents depend heavily on the program, raising questions about whether they will have the votes to pass their blueprint at all.
The public pushback could further complicate that debate, as well as efforts to reach a spending agreement as lawmakers return to Washington this week with less than three weeks to avert a government shutdown.
The tenor of the town-hall meetings, including Mr. Sessions’s, suggested that voters were beginning to digest the effects of the Republican agenda.Credit…Mark Felix for The New York Times
Republicans generally hold fewer in-person open town halls than their Democratic counterparts, opting instead for more controlled settings, such as telephone town halls, that minimize the risk of public confrontations. But even before last week, they had begun hearing frustration from voters, who have also expressed their discontent by flooding the phones of congressional offices.
With their already narrow majority in the House, G.O.P. lawmakers are in a fragile position. A voter backlash could sweep out some of their most vulnerable members in midterm elections next year. But the pushback in recent days has come not only in highly competitive districts but also in deeply Republican ones, suggesting a broader problem for the party.
And there is little sign that Mr. Trump is letting up. On Saturday, Mr. Trump said in a social media post that Mr. Musk “is doing a great job, but I would like to see him be more aggressive.” Mr. Musk responded by sending government employees emails that he said were “requesting to understand what they got done last week. Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”
“I have not yet begun to fight, and neither have you,” President Trump said at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Saturday.Credit…Maansi Srivastava for The New York Times
Hours later, during a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Mr. Trump signaled that he was only just beginning to enact his agenda.
“I have not yet begun to fight, and neither have you,” Mr. Trump told a crowd of his supporters at the annual gathering outside in Washington.
Such remarks offer little cover for Republicans like Mr. Sessions facing tough questions from voters who are beginning to chafe at the changes Mr. Trump is pursuing.
But the congressman said that tense exchanges would not deter him from holding more events and seeking opportunities to communicate with his constituents, whether they agree with his positions or not. He said he would hold more events across the district next week, and hopes that after another week in Washington, he will be able to provide more clarity for those who show up.
“I heard them and they heard me,” he said of Saturday’s gathering. “And I don’t think there was a fight.”
It is truly appalling when TV anchors like Jake Tapper and even the NY Times, and multiple other people who should know better than to call Elon Musk’s advisory panel, playground, commision a Department. A department can Only be created and funded by Congress, starting with the State Department in 1790 and, most recently, the Department of Veterans’ Affairs established in 1987.
The “DOGE” is essentially Musk and Company with a specious label “Department” fronted by the Trump Administration and lapped up by much of the media, increasingly whitewashing Trump’s behavior, presenting a “fair and balanced” daily accounting of the Republican executive’s “novel approach to governing”. To dub something a department, when able News outlet’s the the Guardian. DO NOT BE FOOLED: This may seem a small thing, but it symbolizes something much bigger.
So we are seeing here the ripe fruit of government spendingL The AGENCY for INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT with a whopping $79 bllion dollar budget. This ii cash for food, disease control, democratizing countries that need the services. The budget for an agency that gives humanitarian aid to over 100 countries. This is a fraction of the boated part of the Defense Department’s 800 Billion plus $$$. So this is a microcosm of the Trump adminstration’s priorities.
12 SHARED INTEREST: HOW USAID ENHANCES U.S. ECONOMIC GROWTH | USAID is committed to improving the equitable access and quality of education in beneficiary countries. From 2011 to 2015, results under the USAID Education Strategy included the following: • Quality & learning: USAID expanded the reach of its reading programs from 7 million children across 19 countries in 2011, to 22.7 million children across 41 countries in 2015. In assessments of student learning, 1.5 million students (more than half female) demonstrated improved reading skills. • Access: USAID programs established or improved education in safe learning environments for a total of 11.8 million individual children and youth in crisis and conflict environments (5.6 million females, 6.2 million males). • Supporting higher education for innovation and knowledge: The Agency supported 72 joint research programs between U.S. and host country higher education institutions to advance economic growth and sustainability through research and innovations in agriculture, energy and health, among other sectors. HEALTH A healthy population is essential for economic growth. Increasing life expectancy by even one year is estimated to raise the trajectory of GDP per capita by approximately 4 percent.28 And illness has significant long-term implications for the productivity and output of a country’s economy. Healthy, well- nourished children miss fewer days of school and learn more. Healthy workers produce more, while adults with chronic illness may not even enter the labor force. Healthy parents invest more time and money in raising children. Fewer resources, combined with inadequate social safety nets, mean that health shocks have significant implications for households in poorer countries. Global health crises and pandemics also pose a significant threat to economic security—researchers estimate that even at current treatment levels for HIV/AIDS, the loss in GDP over the next decade could range from 2 to 4 percent in Sub-Saharan Africa.13 SHARED INTEREST: HOW USAID ENHANCES U.S. ECONOMIC GROWTH | USAID’s Global Health Bureau invests in cutting-edge research for innovative health interventions, leveraging partnerships and strengthening health-financing systems of developing countries. Highlights include the following examples: • In 2015, USAID reached nearly 18 million children globally with nutrition interventions and provided support to nearly 6.2 million orphans, vulnerable children and families. • From 2000 to 2015, USAID contributed to an estimated 22 percent decline in tuberculosis-related mortality and a 21 percent decline in the global incidence of tuberculosis, saving an estimated 49 million lives. • From 2000 to 2015, USAID contributed to an estimated almost seven million malaria deaths averted globally and an estimated 71 percent decline in malaria-related mortality in children under five in Sub- Saharan Africa. USAID also works to fight pandemics such as HIV/AIDS, Ebola and Zika among others, which have had profound economic impacts and can contribute to huge losses in human life, capital and skills. Alongside implementing partners, USAID’s programs contributed to 20 percent fewer HIV infections than 10 years ago and led to putting more than 15 million people on antiretroviral therapy. USAID is also a leader in the control and prevention of infectious diseases, an increasingly important role as emerging diseases such as H5N1, Ebola and Zika threaten our health and economy. CRISIS RESPONSE: CONFLICTS AND NATURAL DISASTERS Sudden and unexpected catastrophes can result in a sustained drop in income and can compromise long-term growth prospects. Stabilizing countries in the face of natural disasters or conflicts reduces growth volatility, which improves medium and longer term growth trends. Low-income countries in particular have little redundant infrastructure and lack the economic resources to lessen the long-term impact of shocks.14 SHARED INTEREST: HOW USAID ENHANCES U.S. ECONOMIC GROWTH | Conflict takes a tremendous toll on an economy. For example, the Syrian civil war has resulted in economic losses estimated at $20 to $38 billion in annual GDP capacity. Recovery from this scale of economic damage takes a long time. The negative impacts resulting from the destruction of infrastructure linkages necessary for production, trade and transport, as well as employment can persist for years. Instability from conflict can also pose significant threats to neighboring countries, affecting regional stability and growth. In addition, outflows of refugees and reductions in human capital development (particularly in health and education) can roll back development progress. Simulations estimate that even six years after the end of a civil conflict, GDP per capita will be at least 15 percentage points lower, on average, than it would have been without the conflict.29 The immediate negative impacts of natural disasters are alleviated with humanitarian aid and food assistance. In FY 2016, USAID responded to 52 disasters and programmed $1.4 billion in humanitarian assistance. Funds provided: assistance in active conflicts in Syria, South Sudan, Iraq and Yemen; drought response in Ethiopia and Southern Africa; and earthquake response in Ecuador. Food security deficits are often a serious threat to stability during both conflicts and natural disasters. In the face of food shortages, USAID provides targeted food assistance to address hunger and immediate assistance needs. USAID also invests in in long-term solutions to food security to reduce the need for costly food aid in the future and help entire countries become food secure. Threats to stability can also result from unstable political transitions. USAID manages these threats with rapid, flexible and immediate assistance, taking advantage of windows of opportunity to build democracy and peace by working with policymakers and government officials to lay the foundations for long-term development. USAID deploys election and governance experts to work with officials in nascent democracies emerging from crisis and political transitions to establish systems for the delivery of essential services, and institute sound policies that uphold greater transparency and accountability throughout state and local government.15 SHARED INTEREST: HOW USAID ENHANCES U.S. ECONOMIC GROWTH | HOW USAID PROGRAMS SUPPORT U.S. SUPPLY CHAINS AND U.S. JOBS AGRICULTURAL COMMODITIES Industries depend on raw materials from overseas. USAID works with partner countries to increase the production and improve the quality of their exports, including commodities that supply key U.S. industries. This is a win for development, and a win for jobs in the United States. Sometimes, as in the case of cacao, supplies from one region (West Africa) are growing in importance for manufacturing because supplies are diminishing from another region. USAID programs in countries that supply inputs to U.S. industries can prevent other countries from monopolizing trade in these key commodities, contributing to national prosperity. The coffee industry is a good example. This industry accounts for 1.6 percent of our GDP and nearly 1.7 million American jobs, yet little to no coffee is grown in the continental United States. Our geography is not ideal for it. Through Feed the Future, USAID works closely with U.S. coffee companies and smallholder farmers to integrate market systems in partner countries and the U.S. Through these programs, farmers in developing countries can access new markets, and U.S coffee companies have access to a steady supply of quality coffee. We are also working to combat diseases that threaten global coffee crops and are helping boost the amount of coffee that reaches markets each year.30 As is the case with coffee, cacao cannot be grown in the continental United States, yet it is essential to our confectionery industry, which has a direct economic impact of $35 billion a year—including $10 billion in U.S. taxes and $2 billion in exports. Feed the Future programs are designed to grow cocoa bean exports and improve quality, increasing incomes of smallholder farmers. This benefits U. S. producers and supports U.S. jobs. The chocolate and cocoa industry provides at least 70,000 U.S. jobs, involving suppliers, retail, manufacturing and transportation.31 In addition, U.S. chocolate companies16 SHARED INTEREST: HOW USAID ENHANCES U.S. ECONOMIC GROWTH | further stimulate the domestic economy by sourcing domestically produced ingredients such as sugar and almonds. In Indonesia, USAID activities increase the supply, quality and access of spices in partnership with the U.S. Company, Cooperative Business International (CBI). They increase harvests, improve farmers’ access to international markets and improve the quality of high-value products such as vanilla, pepper, clove and nutmeg. CBI’s local affiliate, Agri Spice Indonesia, supplies Indonesian spices to Maryland’s McCormick & Company.32 USAID also helps connect Indonesian farmers to markets, and protect wage workers from exploitation. The bulk of the world’s rubber is produced in only three countries in Asia, including Indonesia. USAID works with Indonesia to create environmentally sustainable livelihood opportunities growing rubber trees, and to improve labor standards on rubber plantations. Rubber is a commodity that states such as South Carolina depend on to sustain its approximately 12,000 tire manufacturing jobs. TRADE FACILITATION Building capacity to expand trade is critical for U.S. businesses to be able to get their goods and services to, and inputs from, developing countries. The OECD finds that when countries build capacity to trade efficiently—that is, speedily moving goods across borders—it stimulates growth and increases incomes. The OECD estimates that with improved trade facilitation, trade costs could be reduced by 16.5 percent in low-income countries and 17.4 percent in lower middle-income countries, and that just a one percent reduction in global trade costs would increase worldwide income by over $40 billion.33 To modernize trading systems, USAID has supported trade facilitation in over 60 countries globally for more than a decade.34 This work involves: (i) improving customs valuation, automation, and electronic data interchange, including the automated single window; (ii) introducing risk management; (iii) promoting legislative reform; (iv) enhancing post-clearance audit; (v) improving logistics and transport services; and (vi) reducing processing times. CONCLUSION Growing the American economy by supporting economic growth in developing countries makes sense. It is an effective strategy for the U.S. Government. Of course, USAID programs do not support U.S. economic growth by themselves; they complement other programs financed and implemented by the countries themselves and other donors that encourage private sector investment and development. And economic growth depends first and foremost on the policies of the countries themselves, which USAID works hard to positively influence. When countries are ready to move forward economically, USAID programs can provide the needed capital, technology, ideas and know-how to assist them in developing and implementing their economic growth programs as well as improving governance and rule of law. As noted above, when countries face a shock or crisis, such as a natural disaster, pandemic or an outbreak of violence, USAID short-term assistance can help minimize the damage and get them back on track so growth can continue. USAID is both from the American people and for the American people.17 SHARED INTEREST: HOW USAID ENHANCES U.S. ECONOMIC GROWTH | 1 UN, Food and Agriculture Organization (2011). Putting Nature back into Agriculture. http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/80096/icode. 2 U.S. Department of State. (2017). “Annual Report to Congress, PEPFAR.” https://www.pepfar.gov/documents/organization/267809.pdf. 3 Arndt, C., Jones, S., & Tarp, F. (2015). “Assessing Foreign Aid’s Long-run Contribution to Growth and Development.” World Development, 69. 4 World Economic Forum (2016-17). “The Global Competitiveness Report.” http://reports.weforum.org/global- competitiveness-index. 5 Agricultural commodities are a major exception but they make up only 10% of total U.S. goods exports. 6 Actio. (2015). “The Size of Boeing’s Supply Chain.” http://blog.actio.net/supply-chain-management/the-size-of- boeing-supply. 7 http://www.scaa.org/?page=resources&d=facts-and-figures. 8 All data in real terms, unless specified. Most figures are on goods exports only, due to gaps in services data. 9 Real growth of U.S. domestic exports (total exports less re-exports) from 2007-2016, calculated from USITC Dataweb, US BEA, and USAID Foreign Aid Explorer. 10 Calculated from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. 11 Calculated from IMF Direction of Trade Statistics. World Bank (income classifications). 12 Calculated from USITC Dataweb, World Bank (income classifications). 13 Europe and Eurasia graduates include Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovak Republic and Slovenia. Calculated from U.N. COMTRADE International Trade Statistics Database, 2016. 14 Calculated from USITC Dataweb and U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. 15 Calculated from U.S. Department of Commerce, International Trade Administration. 16 Levine, R. (2005). “Finance and Growth: Theory and Evidence,” Handbook of Economic Growth, 1, 865-934. 17 Figure is calculated from the Credit Management Systems within DCA that monitors all guarantees and partnerships administered through DCA. 18 U.S. Energy Information Administration. (2013). “International Energy Outlook: Future World Energy Demands Driven by Trends in Developing Countries.” https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=14011. 19 CDC Development Impact Evaluation. (2016). “Evidence Review: What Are the Links between Power, Economic Growth and Job Creation?” http://www.cdcgroup.com/Documents/Evaluations/Power%20economic%20growth%20and%20jobs.pdf. 20 $490 billion of capital for new generation capacity and $345 billion for transmission and distribution, from McKinsey & Company, “Brighter Africa Report 2015.” 21 Energy at USAID. (2016). “Promoting U.S. Prosperity: The Case for Energy Investment Overseas.” USAID, Washington, DC. 22 Timmer, C. P. (2002). “Agriculture and Economic Development,” in Handbook of Agricultural Economics, 2, 1487-1546. 23 USAID (2016). “Progress Report: Growing Prosperity for a Food-secure Future.” https://www.usaid.gov/what-we-do/agriculture-and-food- security. 24 Field, E. (2007). “Entitled to Work: Urban Property Rights and Labor Supply in Peru.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 122(4), 1561-1602. 25 Hanushek, E., & Woessmann, L. (2010). “Education and Economic Growth.” Economics of Education Review, 60-67. 26 Hanushek, E. A. (2013). “Economic Growth in Developing Countries: The Role of Human Capital.” Economics of Education Review, 37, 204- 212. 27 UNESCO (2010). Education Counts: Towards the Millennium Development Goals. Paris. http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0019/001902/190214e.pdf. 28Bloom, D. E., Canning, D., & Sevilla, J. (2004), “The Effect of Health on Economic Growth: A Production Function Approach.” World Development 32: 1-13. 29 Mueller, H., & Tobias, J. (2016). “The Cost of Violence: Estimating the Economic Impact of Conflict.” IGC Growth Brief Series 007. London: International Growth Centre. 30 National Coffee Association of USA. (2016). “Understanding the Economic Impact of the U.S. Coffee Industry.” http://www.ncausa.org/Industry-Resources/Economic-Impact. 31 National Confectioners Association. (2015). “The Economic Impact Leadership of Americas Confectionery Industry.” http://www.candyusa.com/our-industry/economic-impact-leadership-of-americas-confectionery-industry. 32 NCBA CLUSA. (2015). “Cooperatives Build a Better World.” 33 OECD/WTO (World Trade Organization). (2015). “Aid for Trade at a Glance 2015: Reducing Trade Costs for Inclusive, Sustainable Growth.” WTO, Geneva/OECD Publishing, Paris. 34 USAID Office of Trade and Regulatory Reform. (2016). “Fact Sheet – USAID Supports Trade Facilitation.” USAID, Washington, DC.18 SHARED INTEREST: HOW USAID ENHANCES U.S. ECONOMIC GROWTH | ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS USAID’s Shared Interest paper was developed through a highly consultative process directed by Dr. Louise Fox, the Agency’s Chief Economist, and by Robyn Broughton of the Bureau for Policy, Planning and Learning (PPL). Shared Interest is much stronger as a result of the Agency’s intensive engagement and the multiple internal and external rounds of review. The team is especially grateful to the many colleagues who took the time to read the document carefully and to offer their perspectives. Additional assistance was provided by Pauline Adams (PPL), Emily Benner (PPL), Hope Bryer (PPL), Polly Byers (PPL), Wendy Coursen (LPA), Mitchell Craft (BFS), Michelle Dworkin (LPA), Jeffrey Haeni (E3), Upaasna Kaul (PPL), Stephen Kowal (E3), Janeen May (Asia), So-Youn Oh (PPL), Patricia Rader (PPL), Curt Reintsma (BFS), Jeff Schlandt (USAID Data Service Team), Victoria Stoffberg (PPL), Jeffrey Szuchman (PPL), Ryan Tramonte (Power Africa), and Susan Wilder (PPL).
The silence of Republicans about voter fraud in the 2024 elections is– SURPRISE!– deafening. Also the silence of Democrats about the role of voter suppression in electing Trump and many of his “Class of 2024 boys and girls in the Congress” is equally so.
A guest post by Greg Palast for the Hartmann Report
Trump lost. That is, if all legal voters were allowed to vote, if all legal ballots were counted, Trump would have lost the states ofWisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia. Vice-President Kamala Harris would have won the Presidency with 286 electoral votes.
And, if not for the mass purge of voters of color, if not for the mass disqualification of provisional and mail-in ballots, if not for the new mass “vigilante” challenges in swing states, Harris would have gained at least another 3,565,000 votes, topping Trump’s official popular vote tally by 1.2 million.
Stay with me and I’ll give you the means, methods and, most important, the key calculations.
But if you’re expecting a sexy story about Elon Musk messing with vote-counting software from outer space, sorry, you won’t get that here.
As in Bush v. Gore in 2000 and in too many other miscarriages of Democracy, this election was determined by good old “vote suppression,” the polite term we use for shafting people of color out of their ballot. We used to call it Jim Crow.
Here are key numbers:
— 4,776,706 voters were wrongly purged from voter rolls according to US Elections Assistance Commission data. — By August of 2024, for the first time since 1946, self-proclaimed “vigilante” voter-fraud hunters challenged the rights of 317,886 voters. The NAACP of Georgia estimates that by Election Day, the challenges exceeded 200,000 in Georgia alone. — No fewer than 2,121,000 mail–in ballots were disqualified for minor clerical errors (e.g. postage due). — At least 585,000 ballots cast in-precinct were also disqualified. —1,216,000 “provisional” ballots were rejected, not counted. — 3.24 million new registrations were rejected or not entered on the rolls in time to vote.
If the purges, challenges and ballot rejections were random, it wouldn’t matter. It’s anything but random. For example, an audit by the State of Washington found that a Black voter was 400% more likely than a white voter to have their mail-in ballot rejected. Rejection of Black in-person votes, according to a US Civil Rights Commission study in Florida, ran 14.3% or one in seven ballots cast.
There are also the uncountable effects of the explosive growth of voter intimidation tactics including the bomb threats that closed 31 polling stations in Atlanta on Election Day.
America’s Nasty Little Secret
The nasty little secret of American democracy is that we don’t count all the votes. Nor let every citizen vote.
In 2024, especially, after an avalanche of new not-going-to-let-you-vote laws passed in almost every red state, the number of citizens Jim Crow’d out of their vote soared into the millions. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, since the 2020 election, “At least 30 states enacted 78 restrictive laws” to blockade voting. The race-targeted laws ran the gamut from shuttering drop boxes in Black-majority cities to, for the first time, allowing non-government self-appointed “vote fraud vigilantes” to challenge voters by the hundreds of thousands.
Throughout election seasons, The New York Times and NPR and establishment media write stories and editorials decrying vote suppression tactics, from new ID requirements to new restrictions on mail-in voting. But, notably, the mainstream press never, ever, not once, will say that these ugly racist attacks on voters changed the outcome of an election.
Question: If these vote suppression laws—notorious example: Georgia’s SB 202—had no effect on election outcomes, then why did GOP legislators fight so hard to pass these laws? The answer is clear on the Brennan Center’s map of states that passed restrictive laws. It’s pretty much Trump’s victory map.
America Goes Postal
Let’s look at just one vote suppression operation in action.
In 2020, during the pandemic, America went postal. More than 43% of us voted by mail.
But it wasn’t easy. Harris County, Texas, home of Houston, tried to mail out ballots during the Covid epidemic on the grounds that voters shouldn’t die waiting in lines at polling stations. But then, the state’s Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton stopped this life-saving measure.
Why wouldn’t this GOP official let Houstonians vote safely? Maybe it’s because Houston has the largest number of Black voters of any city in America. Indeed, on Steve Bannon’s podcast, Paxton proudly stated, “Had we not done that [stopped Houston from sending out ballots], Donald Trump would’ve lost the election” inTexas. Texas!
Before the 2024 election, prompted by Trump’s evidence-free attack on mail-in ballots as inherently fraudulent, 22 states, according to the Brennan Center, imposed “38 new restrictions on the ability to vote absentee that were not in place in 2020…likely to most affect or already have disproportionately affected voters of color.” You’re shocked, right?
Texas’ requirement to add ID numbers to an absentee ballot caused the rejection rate to jump from 1% to 12%.
So, here’s the question we need to ask. If restrictions on mail-in balloting swung Texas to Trump, how did all these new restrictions affect the outcome of the vote in other states?
In 2020, an NPR study found the mail-in ballot rejection rate hit 13.8% during the Democratic primaries—a loss of one in seven ballots.
Here are photos of a Georgia voter, career military officer and Pentagon advisor Major Gamaliel Turner (Ret), demonstrating for young voters how to fill out an absentee ballot, emphasizing that it must be mailed in promptly. He did, seven days before the deadline. But we only recently learned that Georgia officials disqualified his ballot as received too late.
Major Gamaliel Turner (now retired) about to mail in his absentee ballot. The state of Georgia rejected it. (Photo: Palast Investigative Fund 2024.)
In 2008, even before the majority of Democrats began voting by mail, when absentee balloting was much rarer, the federal government reported 488,136 mail-in ballots were rejected, almost all on picayune grounds (i.e. middle initial on signature missing etc.). An MIT study put the number of rejected mail-in ballots at 2.9%.
That’s the low-end of MIT’s estimate of mail-in ballots tossed out. Charles Stewart, Distinguished Professor of Political Science, author of the report, notes mail-in ballots requested and never received nor returned could raise the total mail-in ballot loss rate to 21%.
For 2024, that would total 14.1 million ballots that, effectively, vanished from the count.
The “failure to return” ballot was exacerbated in this election by the steep cut in ballot drop boxes, a method favored by urban (read, “Democratic”) voters. Black voters in Atlanta used ballot drop boxes extensively because they feared, with good reason, relying on the Post Office [see Major Turner’s story above].
In response, the Republican Governor of Georgia, Brian Kemp, signed SB 202 which slashed the number of drop boxes by 75% only in Black-majority counties and locked them away at night. These moves slashed mail-in and drop box balloting, used by the majority of Democrats in 2020, by nearly 90% in the 2024 race.
Even if deemed “on time,” ballots still face rejection. Marietta, Georgia, first-time voter Andrian Consonery Jr. told me his mail-in ballot was rejected because his signature supposedly didn’t match that on his registration. (I needn’t add, Consonery is Black.) In effect, Consonery was accused of forgery—a federal crime–not by the FBI but by self-appointed amateur sleuths. This challenge to mail-in ballots, part of a right-wing campaign, has gone viral.
Georgian Adrian Consonery Jr.’s mail-in ballot was challenged because of a false claim that his signature was forged. Photo: Zach D. Roberts for the Palast Investigative Fund (2024)
In 2020, the federal government reported that 157,477 ballots were rejected for supposedly “mis-matched” signatures. That’s quite a crime wave—but without criminals.
And that’s before we get to the dozens of other attacks on voting that were freshly minted for the 2024 election, attacks aimed at voters of color.
The crucial statistic is that not everyone’s ballot gets disqualified. One study done for the United States Civil Rights Commission found that a Black person, such as Maj. Turner, will be 900% more likely to have their mail-in or in-person ballot disqualified than a white voter.
Now, let’s do some arithmetic. If we take the lowest end of the MIT ballot rejection rate, and only a tenth of the “lost” ballot rate, and then apply it to the number of mail-in and drop-box ballots, we can conservatively estimate that 2,121,000 mail-in votes went into the electoral dumpster.
Whose ballots? Democrats are 51% more likely than Republicans to vote by mail; and, given the racial disparity in ballot rejections, Trump’s swing-state margins begin to look shaky.
The KKK Plan and the New Vigilantes
In 2020, the Palast Investigative Fund uncovered a whole new way to bring Jim Crow back to life: challenges to a citizen’s right to vote by a posse of self-proclaimed vote-fraud hunters.
Four years ago, the GOP took this new suppression method out for a test ride in Georgia when 88 Republican operatives—remember, these are not government officials — challenged the rights of over180,000 Georgians to have their ballots counted. These vigilantes based their scheme on the program originally used by the Ku Klux Klan in 1946.
One challenged voter: Major Turner, the same voter whose mail-in ballot was disqualified in a later election.
In 2020, the Major’s ballot was challenged by the county Chairman of the Republican Party in Southern Georgia, Alton Russell. (Russell likes to dress up as infamous vigilante Doc Holliday, with a loaded six-gun in a holster.) In a (polite) confrontation we filmed between the Major and Russell, the GOP honcho admitted he had no evidence that Maj. Turner, nor any of the 4,000 others he challenged, should be denied the right to have their ballots counted.
Note: The Palast Fund contacted a sample of 800 of these challenged voters and found that, overwhelmingly, they were Americans of color.
In 2020, this KKK plan, adopted by the Trump organization, proved its value. In that election, Trump almost won Georgia, falling short by just 11,779 votes—only because local elections officials rejected most of the challenges. But for 2024, the Georgia’s Republican-controlled legislature changed the law to make it very difficult for officials to deny the challenges.
That emboldened the Trump-supported organization True the Vote to roll out the challenge to every swing state. In 2024, True the Vote signed up over 40,000 volunteer vigilantes. The organization crowed proudly that, by August of 2024, they’d already challenged a mind-blowing 317,886 voters in dozens of states. By Election Day this November, True the Vote projected it would have challenged over two million voters. In addition, Trump’s lawyer, Cleta Mitchell, founded Eagle AI to challenge hundreds of thousands more including in swing state Pennsylvania.
How many voters ultimately lost their ballots? Almost all voting officials we’ve contacted have refused to answer.
Placebo Ballots
Those voters who’d been challenged but mailed in their ballot would be unlikely to know their vote had been lost. Others who showed up in person at a poll would be told they could not vote on a regular ballot. These voters were sent away or forced to vote on a “provisional” ballot.
If you’ve been challenged or find you’ve been purged off the registration rolls, you’ll be offered one of these provisional ballots, paper ballots you place in a special envelope. Typically, you’ll be promised your registration will be checked and then your ballot will be counted. Bullshit. If you’re challenged, unless you personally contact or go into your county clerk’s office with ID and proof of address, your ballot goes into the electoral dumpster.
A better name for a “provisional” ballot would be “placebo” ballot. You think you’ve voted, but chances are, you did not, that is, your ballot wasn’t counted.
Here’s an ugly number: According to the US Elections Assistance Commission (EAC), in 2016, when 2.5 million provisional ballots were cast, a breathtaking 42.3% were never counted.
Think about that. Over a million Americans lost their vote — though, notably, not one was charged with attempting to vote illegally. And that was in 2016, before the vigilante challenges and before millions more had been purged from the rolls leading up to the 2024 election.
And here’s the statistic that matters most. Black, Hispanic or Asian-America voters are 300% more likely than white voters to be shunted to a “placebo” provisional ballot.
The Great Purge and the Poison Postcard
The polite term in government agencies is, “List Maintenance.” It’s best known as The Purge—when voters’ registrations are wiped off the rolls. The EAC keeps track of The Purge. It’s a big business. For example, before the 2022 election, when the data was last available, swing state North Carolina wiped 392,851 voters off the rolls.
The majority of removals were based on questionable, indeed, shockingly faulty information that a voter had moved their residence. I’m not talking about the 4.9 million voters purged because they’re dead, or eight million others whose residential move could be verified, nor those serving time in prison nor those ruled too crazy to vote.
I’m talking about a trick that has been perfected by politicians of both parties to eliminate voters of the wrong persuasion: the Poison Postcard. Here’s how it works: Targeted voters are mailed postcards by state elections officials. (Let’s remember, state voting chiefs, “Secretaries of State,” are almost to a one partisan hacks.) Voters who don’t sign and return the cards, which look like junk mail, will be purged.
The Poison Postcard response rate is close to nothing. In Arizona, according to the EAC, just one in ten postcards are returned. And in Georgia, the vote-saving response is barely above 1%. And that’s the way our partisan voting officials like it.
Were the millions of Americans purged before the 2024 election all fraudsters who should lose their right to vote? Direct marketing expert Mark Swedlund told us, “This only means that most people, especially young people, the poor and voters of color, simply ignore junk mail.”
With the help of Swedlund and the same experts used by Amazon—and believe me, Amazon knows exactly where you live–we took a deep dive into two states’ purge operations for the ACLU.
The state of Georgia had purged hundreds of thousands from the voter rolls on grounds they’d moved from their voting addresses. Our experts, going name by name through Georgia’s purge list, working from special data provided us by the US Postal Service, identified 198,351 Georgians who had been purged for moving had, in fact, not moved an inch from their legal voting address. The state’s only evidence these 198,351 voters had moved? They failed to return the Poison Postcard.
In 2020, I testified in federal court for the NAACP and RainbowPUSH, presenting our expert findings to get those voters, overweighted with minorities and young Georgians, back on the rolls. Unfortunately, the Trump’d-up court system now gives huge deference to a state’s voting operations, a trend which first took off in 2013 when the US Supreme Court defenestrated the Voting Rights Act.
The results have been devastating. According to the EAC data, before the 2024 election,4,776,706 registrants were removed nationwide simply because they failed to return the postcard.
Also in 2020, the Palast Investigative Fund produced a technical report for Black Voters Matter Fund on a proposed purge of 153,779 voters in Wisconsin, a plan pushed by Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, a group financed by right-wing billionaires. For Black Voters Matter, we brought back our team of location experts who proved, name by name, that the proposed purge was wildly riddled with errors.
Notably, we found that the purged was aimed almost exclusively at African-Americans in Milwaukee and at students in Madison. The non-partisan Elections Board agreed with us, allowing those voters to cast ballots, with the result that Biden squeaked by Trump in Wisconsin by 20,682 votes. (Note: It was not our intention to elect Biden, but to allow the voters, not some Purge’n General, to pick our President.)
Unfortunately, before the 2024 election, the Poison Postcard Purge accelerated. This time, a new Elections Board in Wisconsin (10 electoral votes) decided to use the same discredited purge list to knock off 166,433 voters which, this time, we could not stop. Kamala Harris lost that state by just 29,397 votes. In Pennsylvania (19 electoral votes), the Poison Postcards wiped out 360,132 voters, three times Trump’s victory margin.
And before the vote this year, Georgia ramped up the purge, targeting an astonishing 875,000 voters, earning it the #1 ranking for “election integrity” by the ultra-right-wing Heritage Foundation.
I saw the purge in action in Savannah, Georgia, this October, where 900 Savannah voters, most of them Black, were challenged by one single “vigilante,” according to voting expert Carry Smith. Smith, who wrote her doctoral thesis on wrongful purges in Georgia, was herself on the hit list.
And more
We haven’t even touched on other ways that voters of color, college students and urban voters have come under attack. These include the rejection of new registrations and rejection of in-person votes as “spoiled” (i.e. rejected as unreadable), costing, according to the EAC, more than a million votes—rejections which our 25 years of investigations have found are way overweighted against the Democratic demographic.
After the 2012 election, I was able to calculate, with cold certainty, that 2,383,587 new voters had their registrations rejected; 488,136 legitimate absentee ballots were disqualified, and so on. In that election, a total of 5,901,814 citizens were blocked from voting or had their ballots disqualified. These stats were based on the hard data from the EAC which gathers detailed reports from the states.
Today, with new, sophisticated, and well-financed vote suppression operations, the number of voters purged and ballots disqualified are clearly far higher than the suppression count of 2012. Unfortunately, the EAC won’t release data, if it does at all, for at least a year. We’ve put in Open Records requests to the states, but today’s officials are stonewalling and slow-walking our requests for the data.
In no other democracy are the vote totals—or, to be clear, the uncounted ballot totals—a state secret.
America deserves an answer to this question: Excluding a boost from Jim Crow vote suppression games, did Donald Trump win?
From the shockingly huge numbers we’ve discussed here of provisional and mail-in ballots disqualified, the postcard purge operation, the vigilante challenges and so on, we can say, with reasonable certainty, Trump lost—that is, would have lost both the Electoral College and popular vote totals absent suppression.
By how much?
For those who can’t sleep without my best estimate, let me apply the most conservative methodology possible, as I would do in a government investigation.
I’ve updated the 2012 suppression numbers with the newest available data. Not surprisingly, the suppression number has soared, in part because the number of voters has increased by 41.3 million since 2012. But principally, the votes “lost” also zoomed upward because of the massive increase in mail-in balloting by Democrats since 2012, and crucially, the effect of new Jim Crow voting restrictions. Given a minimum two-to-one racial and partisan disparity in voters purged and ballots disqualified, the 2024 “suppression factor” is no less than 4.596% of the total vote.
Those familiar with data mining will note that there is some double-counting in the 9 million voters and their ballots disqualified that I cited at the top of the article. In addition, we must recognize that many voters caught up in the purges and challenges would have cast their ballot for Trump. Therefore, I’ve conservatively cut in half the low end of the range of the calculation of votes suppressed to 2.3% to isolate the effect on Trump’s official victory margin.
In other words, vote suppression cost Kamala Harris no fewer than 3,565,000 votes. Harris would have topped Trump’s official total by 1.2 million. Most important, this 2.3% suppression factor undoubtedly cost Harris the states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia. If not for the wholesale attack on votes and voters, Harris would have won the election with 286 Electoral votes.
Mr. Trump has given Mr. Musk vast power over the bureaucracy that regulates his companies and awards them contracts.Credit…Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times
FOLKS, HERE IS ONE OF MANY PROBLEMS WITH WHAT IS HAPPENING IN WASHINGTON: Not the individual inanities on Musk doing this, or tariffs on those countries, or the press referring to this “DOGE thing as if it were real department. and on and on. By ONLY dividing Trump’s Washington wrecking ball
into component parts, while not remembering that the overused “existential threat” is in fact what we seeing going on. What seemed like hyperbolemonths ago, is now an almost dystopic reality. An individual who was electedwith under 50% of the popular voteand who was on the defensive just 6 months ago is now engaged in shock and awe tactics that have the Democrats prostrate and the press focus on the trees rather than the forest, which is very much on fire.
Just one of many things that could be done now, while Google buckles under with the “Gulf of America” thing on their maps, is have an emergency meeting of Democratic governors (and perhaps others) to come up with a plan, a Manifesto, something akin to the Contract with America from the 1990’s. The Americans, even those who gave Trump his slim margin of victory in 2024, deserve more. WHERE IS THE OUTRAGE? It is there, for sure, but it is splintered. Diffused.
In Elon Musk’s first two weeks in government, his lieutenants gained access to closely held financial and data systems, casting aside career officials who warned that they were defying protocols. They moved swiftly to shutter specific programs — and even an entire agency that had come into Mr. Musk’s cross hairs. They bombarded federal employees with messages suggesting they were lazy and encouraging them to leave their jobs.
Empowered by President Trump, Mr. Musk is waging a largely unchecked war against the federal bureaucracy — one that has already had far-reaching consequences.
Mr. Musk’s aggressive incursions into at least half a dozen government agencies have challenged congressional authority and potentially breached civil service protections.
Top officials at the Treasury Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development who objected to the actions of his representatives were swiftly pushed aside. And Mr. Musk’s efforts to shut down U.S.A.I.D., a key source of foreign assistance, have reverberated around the globe.
Mr. Musk, the world’s richest man, is sweeping through the federal government as a singular force, creating major upheaval as he looks to put an ideological stamp on the bureaucracy and rid the system of those who he and the president deride as “the deep state.”
The rapid moves by Mr. Musk, who has a multitude of financial interests before the government, have represented an extraordinary flexing of power by a private individual.
The speed and scale have shocked civil servants, who have been frantically exchanging information on encrypted chats, trying to discern what is unfolding.
Senior White House staff members have at times also found themselves in the dark, according to two officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive discussions. One Trump official, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said Mr. Musk was widely seen as operating with a level of autonomy that almost no one can control.
Mr. Musk, the leader of SpaceX, Tesla and X, is working with a frantic, around-the-clock energy familiar to the employees at his various companies, flanked by a cadre of young engineers, drawn in part from Silicon Valley. He has moved beds into the headquarters of the federal personnel office a few blocks from the White House, according to a person familiar with the situation, so he and his staff, working late into the night, could sleep there, reprising a tactic he has deployed at Twitter and Tesla.
This time, however, he carries the authority of the president, who has bristled at some of Mr. Musk’s ready-fire-aim impulses but has praised him publicly.
“He’s a big cost-cutter,” Mr. Trump told reporters on Sunday. “Sometimes we won’t agree with it and we’ll not go where he wants to go. But I think he’s doing a great job. He’s a smart guy.”
Mr. Musk, who leads a cost-cutting initiative the administration calls the Department of Government Efficiency, boasted on Saturday that his willingness to work weekends was a “superpower” that gave him an advantage over his adversary. The adversary he was referring to was the federal work force.
“Very few in the bureaucracy actually work the weekend, so it’s like the opposing team just leaves the field for 2 days!” Mr. Musk posted on X.
There is no precedent for a government official to have Mr. Musk’s scale of conflicts of interest, which include domestic holdings and foreign connections such as business relationships in China. And there is no precedent for someone who is not a full-time employee to have such ability to reshape the federal work force.
The historian Douglas Brinkley described Mr. Musk as a “lone ranger” with limitless running room. He noted that the billionaire was operating “beyond scrutiny,” saying: “There is not one single entity holding Musk accountable. It’s a harbinger of the destruction of our basic institutions.”
Several former and current senior government officials — even those who like what he is doing — expressed a sense of helplessness about how to handle Mr. Musk’s level of unaccountability. At one point after another, Trump officials have generally relented rather than try to slow him down. Some hoped Congress would choose to reassert itself.
Mr. Trump himself sounded a notably cautionary note on Monday, telling reporters: “Elon can’t do and won’t do anything without our approval. And we’ll give him the approval where appropriate, where not appropriate, we won’t.”
“If there’s a conflict,” he added, “then we won’t let him get near it.”
However, the president has given Mr. Musk vast power over the bureaucracy that regulates his companies and awards them contracts. He is shaping not just policy but personnel decisions, including successfully pushing for Mr. Trump to pick Troy Meink as the Air Force secretary, according to three people with direct knowledge of his role.
Mr. Meink previously ran the Pentagon’s National Reconnaissance Office, which helped Mr. Musk secure a multibillion-dollar contract for SpaceX to help build and deploy a spy satellite network for the federal government.
Part of SpaceX’s Starship rocket in Boca Chica, Texas, last year. Mr. Musk is shaping both policy and personnel decisions that could benefit his companies.Credit…Meridith Kohut for The New York Times
Since Mr. Trump’s inauguration, Mr. Musk and his allies have taken over the United States Digital Service, now renamed United States DOGE Service, which was established in 2014 to fix the federal government’s online services.
They have gained access to the Treasury’s payment system — a powerful tool to monitor and potentially limit government spending.
Mr. Musk has also taken a keen interest in the federal government’s real estate portfolio, managed by the General Services Administration, moving to terminate leases. Internally, G.S.A. leaders have started to discuss eliminating as much as 50 percent of the agency’s budget, according to people familiar with the conversations.
Perhaps most significant, Mr. Musk has sought to dismantle U.S.A.I.D., the government’s lead agency for humanitarian aid and development assistance. Mr. Trump has already frozen foreign aid spending, but Mr. Musk has gone further.
“We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper,” Mr. Musk gloated on X at 1:54 a.m. Monday. “Could gone to some great parties. Did that instead.”
Mr. Musk’s allies now aim to inject artificial intelligence tools into government systems, using them to assess contracts and recommend cuts. On Monday, Thomas Shedd, a former Tesla engineer who has been tapped to lead a technology team at G.S.A., told some staff members that he hoped to put all federal contracts into a centralized system so they could be analyzed by artificial intelligence, three people familiar with the meeting said.
Mr. Musk’s actions have astounded and alarmed Democrats and government watchdog groups. They question if Mr. Musk is breaching federal laws that give Congress the final power to create or eliminate federal agencies and set their budgets, require public disclosure of government actions and prohibit individuals from taking actions that might benefit themselves personally.
At leastfour lawsuitshave been filed in federal court to challenge his authority and the moves by the new administration, but it remains to be seen if judicial review can keep up with Mr. Musk.
The New York Times spoke to more than three dozen current and former administration officials, federal employees and people close to Mr. Musk who described his expanding influence over the federal government. Few were willing to speak on the record, for fear of retribution.
“Before Congress and the courts can respond, Elon Musk will have rolled up the whole government,” said one official who works inside an agency where representatives from Mr. Musk’s cost-cutting initiative have asserted control.
Mr. Musk says he is making long overdue reforms. So far, his team has claimed to help save the federal government more than $1 billion a day through efforts like the cancellation of federal building leases and contracts related to diversity, equity and inclusion, although they have provided few specifics.
Workers in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, which housed some operations for the United States Digital Service, arrived the day after Mr. Trump’s inauguration to find a sticky note with “DOGE” on a door to a suite once used as a work space for senior technologists at the agency.
It was one of the first signs that Mr. Musk’s team had arrived. Inside, black backpacks were strewed about, and unfamiliar young men roamed the halls without the security badges that federal employees typically carried to enter their offices.
Mr. Musk and his team have set up shop in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.Credit…Eric Lee/The New York Times
The quick takeover was similar to the playbook Mr. Musk has used in the private sector, where he has been a ruthless cost cutter, subscribing to the philosophy that it is better to cut too deeply and fix any problems that arise later. He routinely pushes his employees to ignore regulations they consider “dumb.” And he is known for taking extreme risks, pushing both Tesla and SpaceX to the brink of bankruptcy before rescuing them.
In his current role, Mr. Musk has a direct line to Mr. Trump and operates with little if any accountability or oversight, according to people familiar with the dynamic. He often enters the White House through a side entrance, and drops into meetings. He has a close working relationship with Mr. Trump’s top policy adviser, Stephen Miller, who shares Mr. Musk’s contempt for much of the federal work force.
At one point, Mr. Musk sought to sleep over in the White House residence. He sought and was granted an office in the West Wing but told people that it was too small. Since then, he has told friends he is reveling in the trappings of the opulent Secretary of War Suite in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, where he has worked some days. His team is staffed heavily by engineers — at least one as young as 19 — who have worked at his companies like X or SpaceX, but have little if any experience in government policy and are seeking security clearances.
Officially, Mr. Musk is serving as a special government employee, according to the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt. This is a status typically given to part-time, outside advisers to the federal government who offer advice based on private sector expertise.
The White House declined to say if Mr. Musk had been granted a waiver that allowed him to get involved in agencies whose actions could affect his own personal interests. And even if he had been given such a waiver, four former White House ethics lawyers said they could not envision how it could be structured to appropriately cover the range of the work Mr. Musk is overseeing.
In a statement, Ms. Leavitt said that “Elon Musk is selflessly serving President Trump’s administration as a special government employee, and he has abided by all applicable federal laws.”
Mr. Musk has told Trump administration officials that to fulfill their mission of radically reducing the size of the federal government, they need to gain access to the computers — the systems that house the data and the details of government personnel, and the pipes that distribute money on behalf of the federal government.
Mr. Musk has been thinking radically about ways to sharply reduce federal spending for the entire presidential transition. After canvassing budget experts, he eventually became fixated on a critical part of the country’s infrastructure: the Treasury Department payment system that disburses trillions of dollars a year on behalf of the federal government.
Mr. Musk has told administration officials that he thinks they could balance the budget if they eliminate the fraudulent payments leaving the system, according to an official who discussed the matter with him. It is unclear what he is basing that statement on. The federal deficit for 2024 was $1.8 trillion. The Government Accountability Office estimated in a report that the government made $236 billion in improper payments — three-quarters of which were overpayments — across 71 federal programs during the 2023 fiscal year.
The push by Mr. Musk into the Treasury Department led to a months-in-the-making standoff last week when a top career official, David Lebryk, resisted giving representatives from the cost-cutting effort access to the federal payment system. Mr. Lebryk was threatened with administrative leave and then retired. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent subsequently approved access for the Musk team, as The Times previously reported.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent approved the Musk team’s access to the Treasury payments system shortly after he was confirmed.Credit…Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times
The Treasury Department’s proprietary system for paying the nation’s financial obligations is an operation traditionally run by a small group of career civil servants with deep technical expertise. The prospect of an intrusion into that system by outsiders such as Mr. Musk and his team has raised alarm among current and former Treasury officials that a mishap could lead to critical government obligations going unpaid, with consequences ranging from missed benefits payments to a federal default.
Ms. Leavitt said the access they were granted so far was “read only,” meaning the staff members could not alter payments.
Democrats on Monday said they would introduce legislation to try to bar Mr. Musk’s deputies from entering the Treasury system. “The Treasury secretary must revoke DOGE’s access to the Treasury payment system at once,” said Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader. “If he does not, Congress must act immediately.”
Another key pipeline is the government’s personnel database, run out of the Office of Personnel Management, where Mr. Musk has quickly asserted his influence. At least five people who have worked for Mr. Musk in some capacity now have key roles in the office, according to people familiar with their roles.
Last week, the personnel agency sent an email to roughly two million federal workers offering them the option to resign but be paid through the end of September. The email’s subject line, “Fork in the Road,” was the same one that Mr. Musk used in an email he sent to Twitter employees offering them severance packages in late 2022. Since then, Mr. Musk has promoted the offer on social media and called it “very generous.”
Mr. Musk is also studying the workings of the G.S.A., which manages federal properties. During a visit to the agency last week, accompanied by his young son, whom Mr. Musk named “X Æ A-12,” and a nanny, he spoke with the agency’s new acting administrator, Stephen Ehikian.
After the meeting, officials discussed a plan to eliminate 50 percent of expenditures, according to people familiar with the discussions. And Mr. Ehikian told staff members in a separate meeting that he wanted them to apply a technique called “zero based budgeting,” an approach that Mr. Musk deployed during his Twitter takeover and at his other companies. The idea is to reduce spending of a program or contract to zero, and then argue to restore any necessary dollars.
Inflicting Trauma
Russell T. Vought, who served in Mr. Trump’s first administration and is his choice again to lead the Office of Management and Budget, has spoken openly about the Trump team’s plans for dismantling civil service.
“We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” Mr. Vought said in a 2023 speech. “When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains.”
“We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” Russell T. Vought, Mr. Trump’s pick to lead the Office of Management and Budget, said in a 2023 speech. Credit…Tom Brenner for The New York Times
Mr. Musk, who pushed Mr. Vought for the budget office role, for which he is awaiting Senate confirmation, has echoed that rhetoric, portraying career civil servants and the agencies they work for as enemies.
U.S.A.I.D., which oversees civilian foreign aid, is “evil,” Mr. Musk wrote in numerous posts on Sunday, while “career Treasury officials are breaking the law every hour of every day,” he said in another post.
Mr. Musk used the same tactic during his 2022 takeover of Twitter, in which he depicted the company’s previous management as malicious and many of its workers as inept and oppositional to his goals. In firing Twitter executives “for cause” and withholding their exit packages, Mr. Musk accused some of them of corruption and attacked them personally in public posts.
The tactics by Mr. Musk and his team have kept civil servants unbalanced, fearful of speaking out and uncertain of their futures and their livelihoods.
On Jan. 27, members of the team entered the headquarters and nearby annex of the aid agency in the Ronald Reagan Building in downtown Washington, U.S. officials said.
The team demanded and was granted access to the agency’s financial and personnel systems, according to two U.S. officials with direct knowledge of the activity and the agency’s inner workings. During this period, an acting administrator at the agency put about 60 senior officials on paid leave and issued stop-work orders that led to the firing of hundreds of contractors with full-time employment and health benefits.
People delivering food aid in U.S.A.I.D. bags in South Sudan. By Monday, the agency was effectively paralyzed.Credit…Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times
By Saturday, the agency’s website vanished. And when the two top security directors tried to stop members of the team from entering a secure area that day to get classified files, they were placed on administrative leave.
Katie Miller, a member of the Musk initiative, said on X that “no classified material was accessed without proper security clearances.”
By Monday, U.S.A.I.D. was effectively paralyzed. In a live broadcast on his social media platform early Monday, Mr. Musk said the president agreed “that we should shut it down.”
A Culture of Secrecy
Mr. Musk’s team has prioritized secrecy, sharing little outside the roughly 40 people who, as of Inauguration Day, had been working as part of the effort. The billionaire has reposted messages accusing people of trying to “dox,” or publish private information about, his aides when their names have been made public, claiming it is a “crime” to do so.
The opacity has added to the anxiety within the civil service. A number of the employees across the government said they had been interviewed by representatives of Mr. Musk who had declined to share their surnames. Mr. Musk’s aides have declined to answer questions themselves, consistently describing the sessions as “one-way interviews.”
Some workers who sat for interviews were asked what projects they were working on and who should be fired from the agency, people familiar with the conversations said.
“My impression was not one of support or genuine understanding but of suspicion, and questioning,” one General Services Administration employee wrote in an internal Slack message to colleagues, describing the interview process.
A protest outside the Office of Personnel Management headquarters on Sunday. Mr. Musk has quickly asserted his influence at the agency.Credit…Kent Nishimura/Reuters
Some of the young workers on Mr. Musk’s team share a similar uniform: blazers worn over T-shirts. At the G.S.A., some staff members began calling the team “the Bobs,” a reference to management consultant characters from the dark comedy movie “Office Space” who are responsible for layoffs.
Many of Mr. Musk’s lieutenants are working on multiple projects at different agencies simultaneously, using different email addresses and showing up at different offices.
One example is Luke Farritor, a 23-year-old former SpaceX intern, who was among the workers given access to U.S.A.I.D. systems, according to people familiar with his role. He is also listed as an “executive engineer” in the office of the secretary of health and human services, and had an email account at the G.S.A., records show. Mr. Farritor did not respond to requests for comment.
Mr. Musk’s aides, including Mr. Farritor, have requested access to Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services systems that control contracts and the more than $1 trillion in payments that go out annually, according to a document seen by The Times.
The team reports to a longtime Musk adviser, Steve Davis, who helped lead cost-cutting efforts at X and SpaceX, and has himself amassed extraordinary power across federal agencies.
In private conversations, Mr. Musk has told friends that he considers the ultimate metric for his success to be the number of dollars saved per day, and he is sorting ideas based on that ranking.
“The more I have gotten to know President Trump, the more I like him. Frankly, I love the guy,” Mr. Musk said in a live audio conversation on X early Monday morning. “This is our shot. This is the best hand of cards we’re ever going to have.”
Reporting was contributed by Erica L. Green, Alan Rappeport, Andrew Duehren, Eric Lipton, Charlie Savage, Edward Wong, Sarah Kliff and Karoun Demirjian.
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