Trump hints at curbs on Musk’s powers after billionaire shakes up Washington

Summary
The president said Musk won’t have the unfettered ability to dismantle the government, but for now their relationship is holding firm.WASHINGTON—President Trump on Monday said there were curbs in place to prevent Elon Musk from doing anything in the government without the White House’s blessing, responding to growing confusion about who was overseeing Musk’s push to dismantle multiple agencies.
Trump described Musk’s role as advisory. “Elon can’t do—and won’t do—anything without our approval and we’ll give him the approval where appropriate. Where not appropriate, we won’t," Trump said.
Trump’s comments, made to reporters in the Oval Office, came just hours after a Musk-led team effectively shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development. Musk, over the weekend, called USAID “evil," “a criminal organization" and said it is “time for it to die." Secretary of State Marco Rubio was made acting head of the agency on Monday and said he would work with Congress regarding the agency’s future.
Musk leads X, SpaceX and Tesla and helped sent Musk a letter on Monday vowing to help protect DOGE and its staff.
“I recognize that some of the staff at DOGE has been targeted publicly," he wrote. “At this time, I ask that you utilize me and my staff to assist in protecting the DOGE work and the DOGE workers. Any threats, confrontations or other actions in any way that impact their work may break numerous laws."

Musk and his White House team appear to be moving with Silicon Valley velocity to shake up the U.S. government. They have already accessed payment system information inside the Treasury Department and staffing records at the Office of Personnel Management, among other things. On its social-media account, DOGE claimed to have played a role in changing the way water is pumped in California. It also says it has canceled numerous contracts and leases on underused buildings, saving taxpayers millions of dollars.
The abrupt decision by the White House to try to close and reorganize the USAID prompted waves of protest and is serving as a test case for how quickly Trump can reduce the size and scope of the federal bureaucracy and which guardrails he must respect.
The Education Department is another imminent target, according to people familiar with the discussions. Officials at smaller agencies, like the Development Finance Corporation, a federal agency that helps finance projects in developing nations, are also hearing that their duties could be reduced or redistributed, according to people who work there.
Trump administration officials are weighing executive actions to dismantle the Education Department. People gathered over the weekend to protest outside the Office of Personnel Management headquarters; the DOGE team accessed staffing records at OPM, the government’s human-resources arm.
These changes are coming as Musk and his team comb through the federal budget and bureaucracy to identify areas where spending can be slashed. Musk’s team is developing artificial intelligence tools they want to install into government technologies in order to root out what they deem as wasteful government spending, according to people familiar with the matter. And they are aiming to acquire office space in every agency, according to people familiar with how the operation is working.
At the Education Department, for instance, DOGE officials want executive orders that would start to gut the agency with the ultimate goal of severely curbing it, according to a person familiar with the Musk-led department’s plans. Trump during last year’s campaign vowed to eliminate the Education Department entirely.
One question is the legal hurdles that Trump and Musk might confront. Many federal workers are unionized and have protections against being dismissed abruptly. Congressional approval is required to create a federal agency, making it very hard to eliminate one by edict.
At the Development Finance Corporation, employees were told that if they can’t begin working in the office five days a week by mid-April, they need to resign by this Thursday, according to a current employee who requested anonymity out of fear of retribution.
The rapid speed of the changes has sparked confusion among employees across the government. Some at the Development Finance Corporation believe their jobs could morph into the sovereign-wealth fund Trump took actions on Monday to create.
Trump nominated investor Ben Black—the son of Apollo Global Management co-founder Leon Black—to lead the agency on Friday. One employee said that with the number of officials expected to resign this week, the agency could be decimated by the time Black arrives.
Musk has emerged in Trump’s inner circle as far more effective than his close aides initially anticipated. Musk has targeted agencies the Republican Party has scrutinized for decades, said a senior administration official, who added that Musk gives them some cover from the fallout from the major disruptions they are planning.
A person close to Musk compared the Tesla CEO to Dick Cheney’s time as vice president during the George W. Bush administration. Cheney was considered the most powerful person to hold the post because of his access to the president and his deep knowledge of how the federal government operated.

Musk’s approach in his DOGE role mirrors, to an extent, the way he took over Twitter in 2022. At the time, Musk urged those at Twitter who couldn’t commit to working at a high intensity to resign voluntarily. Musk later changed the company’s name to X. After slashing staff, which many speculated would decimate the agency, X continued operating and appeared to have stabilized, proving to be a popular platform for many during the 2024 election. More recently, the company’s financials have been improving, people familiar with the company have said.
Inside the Education Department, civilian employees have watched the developments at USAID with trepidation, fearful that their agency could be next, said a department employee who was placed on administrative leave Friday.
There were some signs that the White House’s bold edicts to reshape the federal government were already facing turbulence.
The Office of Personnel Management sent an email Sunday clarifying terms of its previous offer for some two million government employees to resign and continue to get a paycheck through September. The email acknowledged that the government hasn’t appropriated the funds for the offer, since the current funding bill for the government expires mid-March.
If Congress doesn’t cobble together a spending bill before the deadline, the government could shut down, freezing payments to federal employees. The memo said any employee who accepts the so-called deferred resignation offer would be entitled to backpay in the event of a shutdown.

On Monday, federal workers received more details about the offer in a form labeled “Deferred Resignation Agreement." Employees who resign are expected to continue to work through Feb. 28 to “ensure a smooth transition," according to a copy of the agreement reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. The form also stipulates that employees who resign waive their rights to take action “through any judicial, administrative or other process" related to the resignation offer.
Expectations are low among federal workers that a large number of employees will accept the so-called “deferred resignation" offer from the federal government.
“I don’t think we’re going to have a lot of people who take it…because it appears to be a scam," said Sheria Smith, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 252, which represents about 2,400 employees at the Education Department.
Scott Patterson, Ken Thomas, Kristina Peterson and Alexa Corse contributed to this article.
Write to Annie Linskey at annie.linskey@wsj.com, Brian Schwartz at brian.schwartz@wsj.com and Rebecca Ballhaus at rebecca.ballhaus@wsj.com