Young Aides Emerge as Enforcers in Musk’s Broadside Against Government

from the NYT

At the end of his third week bulldozing through the federal government, Elon Musk sat down to give Vice President JD Vance a 90-minute briefing on his efforts to dismantle the bureaucracy. Mr. Musk was not alone.

Invited to join him on Thursday morning in Mr. Vance’s stately ceremonial office suite in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, next to the White House, were a clutch of young aides whose presence at federal agencies has served as a harbinger of the upheaval that would follow them.

Across the federal government, civil servants have witnessed the sudden intrusion in the last two weeks of these young members of the billionaire’s team, labeled the Department of Government Efficiency. As Mr. Musk traipses through Washington, bent on disruption, these aides have emerged as his enforcers, sweeping into agency headquarters with black backpacks and ambitious marching orders...

 

 ... Even as Mr. Musk’s team members upend the government, their identities have been closely held, emerging only piecemeal when the new arrivals press career officials for information and access to agency systems.

The opacity with which they are operating is highly unusual for those working in government. Aside from those conducting classified or intelligence work, the names of public employees are not generally kept secret...

... When their names have been made public by news organizations such as Wired, they have been scrutinized by online sleuths. Mr. Musk has asserted, falsely, that the exposure of their roles is a “crime,” and X has removed some posts and issued suspensions to those who publicize their identities.

One Musk aide whose name surfaced, Marko Elez, a 25-year-old former employee of X, resigned on Thursday, according to a White House official, after The Wall Street Journal revealed that he had made racist posts on X, writing in one message that “you could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity.” Mr. Elez, a former employee at both X and xAI, Mr. Musk’s artificial intelligence company, was one of two staff members affiliated with Mr. Musk’s team who had gained access to the Treasury Department’s closely held payment system.

Mr. Elez was among those who had been invited to attend Mr. Musk’s meeting with the vice president before he resigned, according to documents seen by The Times. On Friday, Mr. Musk called for The Journal reporter to be fired and said he was reinstating Mr. Elez, a move that both the president and the vice president said they supported. “We shouldn’t reward journalists who try to destroy people,” Mr. Vance posted on X...

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