I have to admit, I thought it would take more than a few short weeks for the richest man on Earth to expose U.S. democracy as little more than a paper tiger. We have checks and balances, after all — the separation of powers, due process, a centuries-old Constitution — all no match, apparently, for “special government employee” Elon Musk and his brood of near-adolescent lackeys at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
With the speed of a self-driving Tesla crashing into oncoming traffic, Musk’s DOGE has run roughshod over federal bureaucracy, gutting the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), canceling close to $1 billion in Education Department contracts and promoting mass buyouts for government workers. In the process, DOGE employees have reportedly breached U.S. taxpayer records and accessed sensitive student loan data; one team member was even “briefly” and “mistakenly” given the ability to edit the Treasury’s federal payment systems.
Musk, of course, is not an elected official. He has not received congressional approval to reshape the federal government, and his authority has been granted by President Donald Trump alone. But on Tuesday, Trump signed a decree granting Musk even more power: The heads of federal agencies must now receive DOGE approval before making new hires.
Many of the actions by Musk and the rest of Trump’s administration have already received significant legal pushback: Labor unions, Doctors for America, dozens of religious congregations, the American Civil Liberties Union and attorneys general from 22 states are among the groups that have sued. Legal experts and sitting senators say DOGE’s blitzkrieg is unconstitutional, and federal judges, for the most part, have agreed. Court orders have temporarily blocked the federal funding freeze, Trump’s rescindment of birthright citizenship, Musk’s dismantling of USAID and DOGE staffers’ access to Treasury systems.
But concerns are mounting over whether these legal measures will be enough to stop the Trump-Musk wrecking ball. The day before Trump bolstered DOGE’s workforce oversight a federal judge ruled that the president had defied orders to restart the flow of federal funds. That ruling sparked articles with headlines like “What happens if Trump starts ignoring court rulings?” and “Here’s what federal judges could do if they’re ignored by the Trump administration.” (The answer, it seems, is not much.)
Trump insists that this is what voters wanted when they reelected him in November, and he says that Musk — who shelled out more than $250 million to help him win his presidential campaign — was always part of the deal. But while Trump’s approval rating hovers above 50 percent in a new poll, only about a quarter of Republicans have said they think Musk should have “a lot” of influence over government operations.
Still, Musk has been granted far-reaching authority, and it could ultimately serve his own financial interests. Musk-led companies hold billions of dollars in government contracts and have been the subject of at least 20 federal investigations. The inspector general of USAID — the agency Musk just moved to destroy — was leading at least one of them, looking into the use of Starlink satellites in the war in Ukraine. Neuralink, Musk’s brain computer chip company, is under investigation by the Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Agriculture after 1,500 animals died at company testing facilities. And Musk has promised to attack the Federal Aviation Administration, which launched an investigation into SpaceX after one of the company’s rocket ships exploded in January.
In a Monday letter to the White House, Sen. Adam Schiff (D-California) demanded information about Musk’s conflicts of interest and ethical obligations. But if federal court orders can’t get Trump to bend the knee, a letter is unlikely to do the trick. Plus, the White House has already shared its foolproof plan: “If Elon Musk comes across a conflict of interest with the contracts and the funding that DOGE is overseeing,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on February 5, “then Elon will excuse himself from those contracts.” Oh, good, that clears things up. What could possibly go wrong?
History may provide some answers. In his 2004 book, The Anatomy of Fascism, Robert Paxton, a political scientist and history professor at Columbia University, coined the terms “parallel state” and “parallel structures” to describe how authoritarians steadily exert dominion over state functions.
“An outsider party that wants to claim power sets up organizations that replicate government agencies,” Paxton writes. “The fascist parties’ parallel structures challenged the liberal state by claiming that they were capable of doing some things better.… After achieving power, the party could substitute its parallel structures for those of the state.”
The comparison is not 1:1, of course. Paxton cites Nazi Germany’s paramilitary force, party court, youth movement and separate foreign policy branch as examples of parallel organizations that supplanted traditional state agencies after the Nazis achieved power. Notably, Trump is already in power, and Musk’s takeover is not absolute. We have not seen the wholesale replacement of our federal agencies by an external body (yet).
But Paxton’s historical analysis provides a useful framework when thinking about DOGE. After all, Paxton notes, “Hitler never formally abolished the constitution drafted in 1919 for the Weimar Republic, and never totally dismantled the normative state in Germany, though he himself refused to be bound by it.” Fascism need not announce itself with shiny gold horns and formal decrees. It can, and does, as we know, creep in slowly. When we see a parallel government taking shape, operating as the state’s shadow and pushing the outer limits of the law, we should take heed. If it looks like a fascist and talks like a fascist, well…
Right now, we’re in a sort of pilot phase. The legal system is still there to contain Trump, but he’s seeing how far he can stretch and warp its bounds until it breaks. If Trump succeeds, brazenly shirks judges’ orders and pushes forward implementing all his heart’s desires — well, it’ll be the snap heard around the world.
We can look again to history to see what could come next.
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