Musk’s Blitzkrieg Is Unnerving Many Of Trump’s Senior Advisers

By Jeff Stein, Jacqueline Alemany, John Hudson, Laura Meckler and Dan Diamond

Top treasury officials have complained about disruption. The secretary of state has pushed back on staff cuts. Inside the Education and Health and Human Services departments, political appointees have been informed — not consulted — about canceled grants and contracts, sometimes learning about decisions from the media.

Elon Musk’s aggressive tactics to reshape the federal government have irritated and blindsided many senior officials in the Trump administration, including those tasked with running Cabinet departments being squeezed by his U.S. DOGE Service, according to interviews with more than 30 current and former officials and their advisers, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters. Amid these bubbling tensions, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles personally asked Musk last week to better coordinate on DOGE’s sweeping actions.

The broad goals of Musk’s team at DOGE, which stands for the Department of Government Efficiency, are shared by not just President Donald Trump, but most of his senior advisers, who also want to shrink the government through unilateral cuts. And yet agency heads Trump chose are finding themselves caught off-guard by DOGE’s actions and forced to reverse, mitigate or answer for some of its most disruptive moves. While working to win Senate confirmation to be health and human services secretary, for instance, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had to reassure GOP senators he would reexamine DOGE-driven cuts to the National Institutes of Health. Linda McMahon, President Donald Trump’s nominee for education secretary, told senators that she, too, would investigate cuts at her department.

DOGE’s blitzkrieg across the federal government has sparked deep concern among civil servants, who have been targeted for layoffs and required to implement policies they see as unwise, if not illegal. But Trump’s political appointees are quietly expressing unease with Musk as well.

“Basically every Cabinet member is sick of him, but nobody feels like they’re in a position to do anything about it,” said one person who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations with several incoming secretaries or their staffs. “People are afraid to cross him even as he’s wreaking havoc on their agencies.”

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