this post was submitted on 18 Feb 2025
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Summary

The White House now claims Elon Musk is not leading DOGE, despite Trump previously stating Musk was in charge of the task force cutting $2 trillion in federal spending.

A court filing says Musk is only a senior adviser without formal decision-making authority. However, Musk’s tweets and Trump’s remarks suggest he has been directing DOGE’s activities.

The revelation raises legal concerns, as lawsuits argue DOGE violates the Appointments Clause by bypassing Senate confirmation.

A federal judge is set to rule on an emergency motion against Musk’s involvement.

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[–] circuitfarmer@lemmy.sdf.org 36 points 3 days ago (3 children)

I suspect one of two things are happening, or maybe a mix of both:

  1. Trump doesn't like the insinutations that he himself isn't in control.

  2. Musk's public image issues are now affecting the bottom lines of his companies.

These things are direct results of both men being complete imbeciles. Nothing more to see here.

[–] FMT99@lemmy.world 35 points 3 days ago (1 children)
  1. They are purposefully sowing more confusion. All the chaos being a smokescreen to hide the obvious fact that they have both hands in the public coffers and are grabbing what they can.
[–] futatorius@lemm.ee 10 points 3 days ago

Yeah, that's it, they're flooding the zone with horseshit.

[–] grue@lemmy.world 13 points 3 days ago

It's Schrödinger's control: for the purpose of having executive authority over the project 2025 policy agenda he is in control, except when doing so is illegal in which case he isn't. The status depends on who's looking, as it is always exactly the status that evades accountability.

[–] Buelldozer@lemmy.today 8 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

They aren't imbeciles. They are pursuing their objectives in ways that are inconsistent with US Law and tradition and when they run into trouble they obfuscate as much as possible to forestall the consequences.

As an example read the court filing from Joshua Fisher (pdf warning). If you read 3 & 4 carefully you'll come to the understanding that Musk is a SGE of the WHO with the Job Title "Senior Advisor".

Then you run into #6 where the text turns itself inside out trying to explain that the US DOGE Service Temporary Organization is under the umbrella of the US DOGE Service which is separate from the White House Office (that employs Musk) but the US DOGE Service is still a component of the Executive...which Musk works for.

Once you are done bending your noggin' around all of that you are probably too tired and confused to ask the most important question. If Musk isn't in charge of DOGE then who is?

We all know it's Musk but they can't say that nor can answer the question with someone else's name because then the jig would be up and they'd be hosed. They need it to be Musk for popularity reasons but they also need it to not be anyone at all so that no one can be held responsible.

They know what they're doing. Don't assume for a single second that they don't. You aren't seeing stupidity, at least not on this, you are seeing methodical, planned, and deliberate attempts to confuse the issue in order to escape consequences and oversight.