Things that, just a few years ago, would have been thought impossible in the American system of government are now happening.

Donald Trump is asserting the president’s power to remake the executive branch as he sees fit — empowering Elon Musk to push aside civil servants, wind down entire agencies, and generally strike terror into the federal workforce. 

Musk’s effort seems to be willfully heedless of laws against firing certain employees and spending requirements from Congress, and outside experts have argued that much of what he is doing seems blatantly illegal. He is doing it anyway.

At the same time, the longtime professionalized “independence” of the US Department of Justice in conducting criminal investigations and prosecutions is being shattered. 

Trump’s team has already fired dozens of prosecutors and top FBI officials who worked on the cases against Trump or January 6, 2021, rioters, and is laying the groundwork for an even more widespread purge of FBI employees who worked on the January 6 probes. Entirely unrelated prosecutions of Trump’s political allies are also being dropped or wound down.

Meanwhile, companies are not only prostrating themselves at Trump’s feet, they’re giving him massive payoffs. Meta paid $25 million to settle Trump’s lawsuit over the company’s suspension of his accounts, the bulk of which will fund Trump’s presidential library. Paramount, the parent company of CBS, is mulling its own settlement in Trump’s nuisance lawsuit complaining about how 60 Minutes edited an interview of Kamala Harris last year.

Both seem blatantly motivated by these companies’ fear that the president will turn the powers of the federal government against them for political payback. And initial actions from Trump’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chief suggest they have good reason to fear this.

The common theme is that Trump is crashing through institutional and legal guardrails preventing the centralization of power in the presidency and the corrupt weaponization of government.

Those of placid temperaments, or those exhausted by years of anti-Trump panic and “threats to democracy” warnings, may be inclined to dismiss these as no big deal. But just try to put yourself into the mindset of a few years ago, to realize how shocking all of these things would have been.

We are still very near the beginning of this story and we have no idea how it will end. But there are two crucial questions going forward. First, what will Trump’s team do with their increased presidential power? Second, will they eventually hit a wall, doing things that are too extreme for the courts or Congress or the public to accept?

Elon Musk has assumed vast powers

The story that has most shocked Washington since Trump was sworn in has been the incredible power wielded by Elon Musk.

Musk has reportedly become a “special government employee,” though his formal role remains unknown. But various allies and former employees of his have been installed at several government offices, including the Office of Personnel Management, the General Services Administration, and the US Digital Service (now renamed the US DOGE Service). It has become clear that Musk is in charge of a vast effort to purge and reshape the federal workforce.

A key source of Musk’s power is that he appears to have gained the ability to place career civil servants who resist his demands on administrative leave. This is what happened to a top Treasury Department official and to security officials at USAID, the US foreign aid agency, when they resisted his team’s demands for systems access. Musk’s allies have also ordered civil servants working on DEI initiatives be placed on administrative leave, and his “fork in the road” email offered paid administrative leave to federal employees who agreed to resign later this year.

Previous presidents have not used administrative leave in this way — in part because it may be illegal. But that’s not holding up Musk, who seems to be using this as a “hack” to bulldoze past government employees who stand in his way — you defy him, and you’re gone. (“Career bureaucrats don’t get to violate lawful orders from the President of the United States,” Vice President JD Vance said in an X post Monday morning.)

Musk’s team has also gained control of the Treasury Department’s systems that disperse government salaries, payments, and grants. Previously, this has been controlled by professionalized civil servants who simply make the payments they’ve been instructed to. Musk, though, seems to want the power to freeze payments he doesn’t like.

Most dramatically, Musk asserted that USAID will be shut down, even though it was established by a law passed by Congress. Musk claimed that, after talking it over with Trump, the president “agreed that we should shut it down.” (“I actually checked with him a few times,” Musk said.)

How is he getting away with doing all this? The answer is, simply, that Trump wants him to. A Washington Post report Monday cited sources close to the president claiming “Trump is not closely monitoring Musk’s moves” but that “Trump views Musk as doing the task he assigned him.” So as long as Musk seems to be acting with the president’s blessing, so long as he can place civil servants on leave willy-nilly, and so long as lawsuits and judges don’t manage to rein him in, he will have immense leeway to operate as he sees fit.

The Justice Department’s independence is being shattered

Less surprising, but still quite concerning and consequential, is the purge underway at the US Department of Justice, which seems to keep getting bigger.

• More than a dozen prosecutors who worked on the two federal cases against Trump were fired last week.
• More than a dozen other prosecutors who had worked on federal prosecutions of January 6 rioters were fired late last week.
• Several FBI executives or field office heads were told to resign or be fired late last week.
• Over the weekend, FBI officials sent out a questionnaire to thousands of FBI personnel asking them to detail any involvement in January 6 rioter cases. The questionnaire seems to herald a potentially much more vast purge of FBI employees, since thousands are believed to have been involved in such cases.

It’s worth noting that Trump isn’t only retaliating against those who investigated him personally. He seems to want to retaliate against anyone who held his supporters accountable for breaking the law and storming the Capitol in an illegal attempt to keep him in power. (And of course, he already issued an incredibly wide-ranging pardon of those rioters, even violent ones who attacked police.)

Meanwhile, Trump’s DOJ moved to shut down an investigation into one Republican member of Congress, and a prosecution of a former member. Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN) was being probed over his finances, but prosecutors on the case suddenly withdrew last week, in what’s likely a wind-down of the case. And false statements charges against former Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (R-NE) were dropped last week too.

All of this is happening before Trump’s appointees to head the DOJ and FBI — Pam Bondi and Kash Patel — are even confirmed. Patel promised with a straight face during his confirmation hearing that he’d work to protect FBI employees from political prosecution (despite years of saying otherwise).

Clearly, though, Trump has no intention of letting the longstanding independence of the DOJ and FBI in criminal investigations continue to exist. The question going forward is how aggressive his appointees will be at trying to fulfill Trump’s long-held desire that his critics and opponents be prosecuted.

Corporations are paying off the president to escape political payback

Meanwhile, the corporate world’s accommodation to Trump, evident at his inauguration, has taken on a troubling new dimension.

Back in 2021, Trump sued Meta because it had suspended his accounts after the January 6 riots. Last week, Meta agreed to pay $25 million to settle the suit, of which $22 million will go to a fund for Trump’s presidential library. 

According to the Wall Street Journal, Trump had mentioned the lawsuit during a dinner with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg after the election last November, signaling it had to be resolved if Zuckerberg wanted a better relationship with his administration.

Similarly, during the campaign, Trump sued Paramount, the parent company of CBS News, alleging 60 Minutes deceptively edited an interview of Harris to help her campaign and hurt his. Brendan Carr, his new chief of the FCC, has asked CBS News for an unedited transcript of Harris’s answer.

Trump’s lawsuit is widely believed to be groundless, but Paramount shareholders fear that the Trump administration will interfere with a planned sale of the company unless they appease him. So they are now engaged in settlement talks too.

Overall, both of these look like companies responding to shakedowns by the president. Meta has already agreed to pay him off (or, pay his library fund off) to avoid political payback, and Paramount may do the same. All this smacks of practices in corrupt kleptocracies, where payoffs of top officials are necessary for businesses to operate without government crackdowns. How much worse will it get?

What comes next?

It’s worth pausing to note that all this has unfolded in just two weeks, with much of it happening in just the past few days.

Trump’s team appears to be on a very clear mission to centralize power in the presidency — taking it away from career civil servants, Congress, and the courts to the extent they can — so Trump will actually be able to wield government power as he sees fit.

That would mean he’ll be far better able to impose policies that career civil servants (and his own appointees) believed would be disastrous, corrupt, or illegal. He’ll also be far better able to weaponize the government against his enemies, like he’s always wanted.

There’s a lot we still don’t know about just what Musk is trying to do, or how wide-ranging exactly the DOJ and FBI purge will end up being. But the more limited the pushback against them ends up being, the more empowered the ideologues on Trump’s team will feel.

So one major question is: Will there eventually be real pushback? Will Musk’s efforts and the various purges get bogged down in legal challenges? Will the FBI workforce push back against attempts to fire their fellow agents for doing their jobs? Will congressional Republicans and swing-vote senators decide they actually didn’t sign up for this? Will there be a major public backlash? 

Last week’s debacle over an order that seemed to freeze all federal grants shows there is a limit to how far the Trump administration will go — after a judge put a hold on the order, Trump’s team rescinded it and claimed it was never meant to be so broad. But Trump’s team continued to charge ahead on other fronts. And unless the courts stop them, they will likely keep doing so.

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