Trump’s New Budget Strategy: Musk Says It’s Fine

There’s a reason the Constitution splits power between three branches of government. It’s supposed to stop any one person—any one branch—from becoming a king. But let’s be honest: Trump never cared about that. And now, in his second term, he's not even pretending to. The former guardrails of democracy have been bulldozed in broad daylight, and we’re watching in real time as executive power gets stretched, twisted, and weaponized beyond recognition.

At the center of this power grab is something that sounds like a joke, but isn’t: the Department of Government Efficiency—aka DOGE. Created by executive order and handed over to Elon Musk like some dystopian startup, DOGE is being used to override decisions that are constitutionally reserved for Congress. We’re talking about federal spending, agency structure, and even which parts of government are allowed to exist. And it’s all happening under the flimsy branding of “efficiency,” while Trump retools the federal government into a loyalty machine.

Let’s start with the budget. Constitutionally, the power of the purse belongs to Congress. That’s not an opinion—that’s Article I, Section 9 of the U.S. Constitution. Congress passes budgets. Congress decides where the money goes. But under Trump, that framework has been flipped on its head. DOGE, under Musk’s direction, has begun shutting down entire agencies, cutting grant programs, and rerouting federal funds—all without congressional input. Just a few weeks ago, thousands of federal workers across agencies like the Human and Health Services and the Department of Education were laid off or furloughed. These weren’t symbolic tweaks. These were real jobs, real programs, real services—scrapped through executive fiat.

And it gets worse. Musk and DOGE are reportedly using AI-driven models to “streamline” federal spending. In practice, that means algorithms—designed by private contractors and rubber-stamped by Trump loyalists—are deciding which federal programs get slashed and which survive. There’s no transparency, no congressional oversight, no public accountability. It’s not just a power grab. It’s a tech-bro takeover of our democratic systems, with billionaires playing government like it’s a new sandbox app.

But don’t get it confused: this is exactly the plan. Project 2025 laid it all out. The blueprint has always been to hollow out the federal government, consolidate power in the executive branch, and flood the system with loyalists who answer only to Trump. And it’s working. What used to take months of budget negotiations and congressional hearings can now be decided with a memo from DOGE and a tweet from Musk. Congress—the body actually elected to represent the people—is being iced out of governing altogether.

You can’t talk about this without naming the broader pattern. Because this isn’t just about money. This is about power. Trump has stacked the federal judiciary with judges who support his version of the unitary executive theory—the idea that the President should have absolute control over the executive branch without interference from Congress or the courts. That theory, once fringe, is now mainstream on the right. It’s what allows Trump to argue that he can direct the Justice Department however he pleases, purge civil servants who don't pledge loyalty, and now, override congressional spending decisions with a Musk-backed agency that didn’t exist a year ago.

The consequences aren’t hypothetical—they’re already here. Take the Pentagon’s “website maintenance” purge. In the name of trimming excess, the Defense Department—again, under executive direction—scrubbed more than 24,000 web pages, including civil rights resources, and historical archives about Black soldiers, LGBTQ+ service members, and Holocaust survivors. These weren’t outdated PDFs. These were the receipts. Erased with no vote, no accountability, and no plan to restore them.

Or look at how Trump is exploiting his relationship with Elon Musk to reshape political communication. With Musk owning X, Trump has turned what was once a semi-public platform into a personal megaphone. Algorithms have been adjusted to suppress progressive voices, amplify right-wing influencers, and mainstream dangerous disinformation. We’re no longer just watching executive overreach—we’re watching the rise of a parallel information state, built by and for authoritarian power.

And let’s not forget that Congress—supposedly the check on all this—is barely functioning. Between GOP loyalty to Trump and Democratic reluctance to directly challenge these abuses with real consequences, we’re left with performative hearings and strongly worded letters while Trump’s machine keeps grinding forward. This isn’t just a Trump problem. It’s a systemic failure to confront the scale of what’s happening.

The silence is deafening. There’s no mass mobilization in Congress to rein in DOGE. No legislative action to claw back budgeting authority. No emergency hearings to address the role of billionaires in federal governance. We’re watching one man, with the help of his favorite tech oligarch, rewrite the job description of the presidency—and most of Washington is too scared or too cynical to say a damn thing about it.

What’s most dangerous is that Trump’s power grabs are designed to feel procedural. It’s not tanks in the streets. It’s memos, restructurings, “efficiency” task forces, and algorithmic budget models. But the result is the same: a government that no longer answers to the people, but to a single man and his handpicked allies. We’re being conditioned to see this as normal—to accept that the president can dismantle agencies with a tweet, that billionaires can control the flow of information, and that Congress is little more than a sideshow.

That’s the real genius of Trump’s authoritarianism: it doesn’t come with fireworks. It comes with executive orders, obscure white papers, and silence from those who should know better. And unless we break that silence, unless we name this for what it is—a full-blown dismantling of democratic norms—we’ll look back and realize we watched it happen in real-time and did nothing.

This isn’t just about Trump. This is about precedent. What he gets away with now becomes the baseline for the next authoritarian who comes along, ready to pick up where he left off. And if we keep letting billionaires like Musk write the rulebook for governance, we won’t be a democracy much longer. We’ll be a brand.