LA Post: Critics say Trump’s federal workforce buyout plan may not be legal

(CNN) — Americans don’t know the full extent of what Elon Musk is doing as he embeds alongside President Donald Trump at the top of the federal government.

What we know is that he’s the world’s richest man, the president’s largest campaign benefactor, and a person whose companies have grown fat on government contracts, so he has a greater financial interest in how the government operates than your average naturalized immigrant.

There are clues

With that context in mind, consider this startling passage from a report by CNN’s Katelyn Polantz, Phil Mattingly and Tierney Sneed about a standoff between career officials at the Treasury Department and employees of DOGE, the Musk-allied Department of Government Efficiency, which has morphed after the election from the out-of-government advisory panel Trump talked about to a rebranded technology unit inside the White House complex. Mattingly, Polantz and Sneed write:

Musk claims to be reclaiming government for you, the taxpaying voter

“This is the critical battle to restore power to the PEOPLE from the massive unelected bureaucracy!” he wrote on the social media platform he owns, pushing people to rally at events opposing the use of taxpayer dollars to fund NGOs, nonprofits unaffiliated with the government that are supposed to do good works.

Think Catholic Relief Services, the World Food Program and Save the Children. There can be a legitimate debate about whether the US should fund those programs in part because we know, thanks to transparency, that the US government is funding those programs.

But his method of taking over the bureaucracy is much less transparent than the bureaucracy itself.

When Bill Clinton offered buyouts to federal workers, in 1993, for instance, he did so after getting buy-in from Congress. Trump’s administration is banking on a slim majority of Republicans in the House buying in to his plan, assuming they get a chance to have a say.

Musk allies now in the government’s HR office

The New York Times and others reported this week that three former Musk employees have taken top positions at the Office of Personnel Management, the formerly obscure HR department for the federal government. It was OPM that first created a government-wide email system and then blasted it with an offer to millions of federal workers giving them the option to resign with pay until September. The offer caught federal workers off guard and unions and government watchdogs have said it is illegal.

OPM confirmed to me that Amanda Scales, who used to work for Musk’s AI company xAI, is now chief of staff at OPM. Brian Bjelde, whose Linkedin profile still lists him as a SpaceX employee, is now a senior director, and so is Anthony Armstrong, a banker who worked with Musk to take over Twitter.

The New York Times report included other Musk allies in positions at other agencies, including the General Services Administration, which oversees federal real estate. Despite encouraging workers to return to the office, Musk also sees getting rid of government real estate or leases, and dispersing remaining workers throughout the country, as a cost saving technique.

Are people getting fired next?

Trump has twice referred to federal workers being fired if they’re not in offices after a February 6 deadline. “If they don’t agree by February 6 to show up back to work in their office, they will be terminated,” he said during a speech at the White House this week. There’s nothing in the resignation offer about people actively being fired in the near term.

Musk’s actual role is unclear

Wired reported he’s told friends he is sleeping at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, on the White House grounds. CNN has not confirmed the report, although it is similar to the story he told about his early days at Twitter and Tesla, when he proved his devotion to employees by sleeping at the office or on the factory floor. It’s either the ultimate commitment to working from home or the ultimate commitment to his job.

One outstanding question: Has he taken an oath, like the federal workers he apparently has plans to fire, to uphold the Constitution?

What are Musk’s conflicts of interest?

I asked Walter Shaub, the former Director of the Office of Government Ethics, who has raised warnings about Trump but also criticized Democrats, about the opacity of Musk’s role and why it should concern Americans.

“The Trump administration owes the American people a detailed explanation as to precisely how it hopes to manage conflicts of interest, as well as whether it deems Musk and each of the other participants in DOGE as a volunteer, a special government employee or a regular government employee,” he said in an email.

People are supposed to know about the people who run their government

That’s why Trump’s nominees to lead agencies have to undergo nomination hearings on Capitol Hill and why top officials are supposed to file paperwork with the Office of Government Ethics disclosing their financial interests and pledging to act ethically.

They’re supposed to know how their government is spending money and who is doing the spending. The mass resignation offer that caught everyone off guard was made under authority granted to the OPM director. Trump’s nominee, the venture capitalist Scott Kupor, has not yet been confirmed, so the agency is operating with an acting director.

What’s next?

Musk laid out some ideas in the Wall Street Journal, back in November when he was working with Vivek Ramaswamy, who has left DOGE.

Mass firings? That plan presaged an effort to encourage workers to resign. What comes next, according to that Journal plan, is they will “identify the minimum number of employees required at an agency for it to perform its constitutionally permissible and statutorily mandated functions,” after which Trump could suspend worker protections to enforce a “mass head-count reductions across the federal bureaucracy.” One wonders how many air traffic controllers is the minimum number required.

Steep spending cuts? They’re hoping to grab new power, with help from the Supreme Court, for the president to simply ignore Congress and not spend money, something called impoundment. They also wanted to cut $500 billion in spending by targeting things like public broadcasting and foreign aid. There’s already evidence of this plan in Trump’s since-rescinded order to halt federal grants.

A hard look at Medicare? Some of the efforts should be welcome to Americans, like a long overdue examination of federal contracting and procurement. But don’t be surprised when it takes a hard look at Medicare spending, despite Trump’s pledge not to cut safety net spending. It’s all written out in the Journal.

What’s not written is a public plan or a list of Musk allies now in the government. That is something everyone should want to take a look at.