SAO PAULO, SP (UOL/FOLHAPRESS)-The passage of billionaire Elon Musk, who said on Wednesday (28) that he will leave office in the United States government, mass resignation projects and, especially, the influence of the entrepreneur under President Donald Trump.
Musk became one of the most controversial figures of a management full of controversial names in the first echelon of the Trump administration. By promoting mass layoffs and stimulating the end of federal initiatives, it caused panic in the lives of thousands of more vulnerable servers and populations, playing the US Federal Administration in a period of uncertainty.
Billionaire sought to eliminate from the government initiatives of diversity and inclusion. To this end, it has made thousands of official government website pages deleted, such as those with health information aimed at LGBTQIA+people. He also made efforts to close USAID (US Agency for International Development), the leading US humanitarian aid agency for the world, but was eventually prevented by court.
Considered one of Trump’s leading counselors since the election campaign, Musk has leveraged conspiracy theories and fake news. The most repercussion recently was that South Africa promoted a genocide against white farmers. With the propagations, he helped maintain the inflamed president’s far-right base, using, at many times, his influence on the X, a social network of which he owns, where he accumulates more than 200 million followers.
*
Mass layoffs
Entrepreneur has led mass layoff campaign in recent months. The argument of Musk and Trump for the cuts was to “end radically with the bureaucracy” and cut government spending. With the plan put into practice, about 200,000 federal employees from different areas have been fired since February.
Main public health scientists have left the government. The health -led cuts in the health area have reached, for example, responsible for supervising the sector, affecting cancer research and approval of vaccines and medicines. Given the exits, they had concerned with researchers and parliamentarians about how the US will respond to harvesting emergencies, such as the current measles outbreak and the spread of avian flu.
Led by the billionaire, Doge cut about 12% of the federal civil labor force of 2.3 million people. Most of the cuts occurred through threats of layoffs and early retirement offerings, according to an analysis by Reuters about layoffs at federal agencies. Asked who worries him most when it comes to the prospect of being fired, an employee of the government’s general service administration, he told the news agency in February: “Musk. No one is really talking about Trump.”
Despite the name, Doge is not a department. The musk -headed project involves advisory authorities and was considered a form of Trump’s prestige to the billionaire. It is also not known exactly who makes up the doge, since the government did not disclose a list of department employees or how they are being paid. Group initiatives also generated lawsuits of unions, inspection body and public interest groups.
By announcing his departure, Musk stated that Doge’s mission will be strengthened over time. According to the billionaire, this scenario will occur as the department “becomes a way of life throughout the government.”
Trump Megapacote criticism
Before announcing the government’s departure, Billionaire criticized Trump’s budget megapacote. “I was disappointed to see this huge spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit (…) and mine the work being done by the Doge team,” Musk said in an interview with CBS News, which was shown an excerpt on Tuesday night (27). The full interview will air on Sunday (1st).
“I think a bill can be large or it can be beautiful,” Musk told CBS News. But he added, “But I don’t know if it can be both at the same time. It’s my personal opinion.”
The bill proposed by Trump reduces social security programs to finance an expansion of the 2017 tax cuts. The “big and beautiful law”, such as Trump The Flame, was approved by the House of Representatives and now goes to the Senate. The text consolidates the government’s view of a new “golden age.” Critics say this will decimate the health care of the poorest Americans and make the national debt fire.
Not to mention Musk, the White House tried to minimize any disagreement about US government spending. “It’s not an annual budget project,” Trump’s advisor Stephen Miller said in X.
Musk out of government?
Americans witnessed “extraordinary centralization of power in someone who has no high level security permit and has not undergone any Senate confirmation process,” said analyst. According to Reuters Don Moynihan, a professor at the Ford School of Public Policy at Michigan, Musk had a “centralized and unprecedented control of the basic government structure.”
Exit from Musk does not mean the end of his ties with Trump management, according to an American magazine analysis. As released by Wired, which covers technology and politics and excelled in the coverage of Musk’s influence on government, some of the team members Musk has led to the government have been hired as effective employees of certain agencies and are spread by various federal government agencies.
“Now there are people in positions in various agencies who are close to him [Musk]which are loyal to him. And I don’t think it’s irrational to wait for them probably to keep contact with him after he leaves, ”said Wired reporter Vittoria Elliot in a May 28 article.
