Billionaire Elon Musk, who is heading US President Donald Trump’s efforts to shrink the federal government, gave an update on the effort early on Monday, saying they were working to shut down the US foreign aid agency USAID.
Musk, who is also CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, discussed the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in a Monday social media talk on X, which he also owns. Trump has assigned Musk to lead a federal cost-cutting panel.
The conversation, which included former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy and Republican senators Joni Ernst and Mike Lee, began with Musk saying they were working to shut down the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
“It’s beyond repair,” Musk said, adding that Trump agrees it should be shut down.
On Sunday, it was reported that the Trump administration had removed two top security officials at USAID during the weekend after they tried to stop representatives from Musk’s DOGE from gaining access to restricted parts of the building, three sources said.
The website of USAID appeared to still be offline on Saturday and some users could not access it on Sunday. USAID has a staff of more than 10,000 people.
Speaking more broadly about cutting US expenses and fraud, Musk estimated the Trump administration can cut US$1 trillion from the US deficit next year.
Musk did not offer any evidence to support his fraud claim or explain how he reached the amount of US$1 trillion.
Since taking office 11 days ago, Trump has embarked on a massive government makeover, firing and sidelining hundreds of civil servants in his first steps toward downsizing the bureaucracy and installing more loyalists.
Remember that the role of the government is to mediate conflict between and among bourgeoisie interests. The one thing the bourgeoisie all agree on is preventing revolution, so that’s the state’s primary throughline. But the idea that a single member of the bourgeoisie can go against class interests in a meaningful way is an idea that flies in the face of history.
You are correct, however, that these decisions are likely a reflection of division in the bourgeoisie. Trump is acting out the will of a faction that he himself belongs to, possibly even contributes to at a high level. But that’s not going to be all of the bourgeoisie. That’s why there’s an inner circle of operators, a middle circle of supplicants and appeasers, and an outer circle of opposition.
USAID likely had some specific interests it was pursuing and likely was a pet project of a faction or camp in the bourgeoisie. Destroying it sends a signal to that camp. Most of the choices being made in the first couple of weeks are symbolic, and not being members of the bourgeoisie ourselves, we are likely not able to see all of the symbolism, because it’s contextual to them.
We are watching tech attempt to assert its self dominant over classical bourgeoisie power. Who was at trumps side? Information technology represents at much or more fundamental change as industrialization. Its not surprising that we are going to seeing a new struggle for power and a push to shed liberal democracy for something new.