GOP Senators Trade Constitutional Authority For Elon’s Phone Number

Failures

from the government-by-dialing-elon dept

Republican Senators are so aware that Elon Musk is literally running the government now that they’re getting his personal cell phone number to beg him to reverse his mistakes. This would be concerning enough on its own — but it’s especially alarming given that just weeks ago, the DOJ explicitly claimed in court that Musk has no authority whatsoever over DOGE or government decisions.

The stark contradiction between what’s happening and what the DOJ claimed came into sharp focus last week when the Washington Post reported that Republican Senators were literally getting Musk’s personal phone number to call him when they need his DOGE team to “get problematic cuts reversed quickly.”

Yes, this is how our government now works. Musk’s wrecking crew destroys stuff, and a select few Republican officials get to call him and plead with him to try to put broken things back together again, even as many of them are not easily restored.

This makes the DOJ’s recent court filings look particularly absurd. Just weeks ago, the DOJ filed an obviously laughably false thing in court claiming that Elon Musk had nothing to do with DOGE. Then, a week later, the White House suddenly claimed that someone named Amy Gleason was actually running DOGE, even though there were reports that many people working for DOGE had no idea that Gleason was their boss.

Everyone knew the Gleason thing was nonsense, and nobody (outside of the DOJ in court filings) even seems to want to pretend that Elon isn’t the one really running the show. Last week, at his address to Congress, Donald Trump said (notably, in front of about half of the Supreme Court Justices) that Elon was running DOGE, which is in direct contradiction to what Trump’s DOJ swore in court.

In court, the DOJ said:

The U.S. DOGE Service is a component of the Executive Office of the President. The U.S. DOGE Service Temporary Organization is within the U.S. DOGE Service. Both are separate from the White House Office. Mr. Musk is an employee in the White House Office. He is not an employee of the U.S. DOGE Service or U.S. DOGE Service Temporary Organization. Mr. Musk is not the U.S. DOGE Service Administrator.

But then, at the address to Congress, Trump basically admitted the DOJ lied to the court.

I have created the brand-new Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE. Perhaps you’ve heard of it. Perhaps. Which is headed by Elon Musk, who is in the gallery tonight.

Lawyers immediately alerted the court to this blatant contradiction, with lawyer Kel McClanahan leading the way, filing this fun “Notice of New Evidence.”

In support of their Motion for Expedited Discovery, Dkt. #20, Plaintiffs Jerald Lentini, Joshua Erlich, and National Security Counselors, Inc. hereby submit new evidence which conclusively demonstrates that expedited discovery is urgently needed to ascertain the nature of the Department of Government Efficiency and its relationship to the United States DOGE Service, of which Amy Gleason is the Acting Administrator. At approximately 9:46 PM, President Trump stated the following in his Joint Address to Congress:

To further combat inflation, we will not only be reducing the cost of energy, but will be ending the flagrant waste of taxpayer dollars. And to that end, I have created the brand new Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE. Perhaps you’ve heard of it. Perhaps. Which is headed by Elon Musk, who is in the gallery tonight.

Live: Donald Trump delivers speech to Congress, Assoc. Press (Mar. 4, 2025), at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEygBVr1neI

When the President directly contradicts his own DOJ’s court filing on national television, it’s more than just embarrassing – it’s a sign of how completely the constitutional structure of our government has broken down. The DOJ is supposed to represent the executive branch’s legal positions truthfully to the courts. Instead, we have the department filing demonstrably false statements while the President openly admits the truth.

In any other administration, this would be a massive, ongoing, frontpage crisis. With Trump, it’s yet another story that is covered for a day and forgotten.

Either way, the story is only getting dumber. The Washington Post explains exactly how Republican Senators are so aware that Elon Musk is literally running the government now that this is happening:

Musk told a group of Republican senators in a closed-door lunch that he wanted to set up a direct line for them when they have questions about DOGE, allowing them to get a near-instant response to their questions and concerns about his group, senators said.

Some senators were given Musk’s phone number, and the entrepreneur said he would “create a system where members of Congress can call some central group” to get problematic cuts reversed quickly, said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina).

This is crazy on multiple levels. First, the Constitution explicitly gives Congress, not an unelected tech billionaire, the power over government spending and agency oversight. Having senators beg Musk to reverse his decisions doesn’t just invert the Constitution, it makes a mockery of it.

Second, if Musk is making so many mistakes that they need to have his number to call in case of emergencies, that suggests he shouldn’t be in this job. The fact that senators are treating this as normal — setting up an emergency hotline to an advisor with literally no authority to do anything, rather than exercising their own authority — shows just how far we’ve strayed from basic principles of democratic governance.

It shows that literally all of them know he has no clue what he’s doing. If you want to cut, there are ways to make cuts that don’t involve having to rapidly roll back your cuts (and we’ve already seen that not only is Musk making massive, catastrophic, unfixable mistakes, but also when he claims they’re reversing those mistakes, that’s not actually happening in some cases).

And, again, in that very same DOJ court filing where the court was told Musk has no role with DOGE, it also said he has no authority to make decisions and can only advise:

In his role as a Senior Advisor to the President, Mr. Musk has no greater authority than other senior White House advisors. Like other senior White House advisors, Mr. Musk has no actual or formal authority to make government decisions himself. Mr. Musk can only advise the President and communicate the President’s directives.

If he’s not running DOGE and has no authority… then why would Senators need to call Musk directly to get things fixed?

So this latest news makes it clear that literally everyone in the government knows that, contrary to what the DOJ claimed in court, Musk is running DOGE and has free control over nearly every aspect of the federal government. Of course, that just confirms that what Musk is doing violates the Appointments Clause (among many other things).

And, really, Republican elected officials need to find whatever spine they have and remind everyone what Congress’s role is, because this is one of the most pathetic statements ever by an elected official:

“With all due respect to Mr. Musk, he doesn’t have a vote up here. … [Give] courtesy to the members. They’re the ones that have to go home and defend these decisions, not you. So why don’t you give them a heads-up,” said Rep. Tom Cole (Oklahoma). “You are certainly complicating the lives of individual members, and you might be making some mistakes and hurting some innocent individuals in the process.”

Think about what Cole is actually saying here: A member of Congress — a co-equal branch of government with explicit constitutional authority over spending — is reduced to begging an unelected billionaire for the courtesy of advance notice before he dismantles government agencies and terminates federal employees. This isn’t just a problem — it’s a blaring constitutional crisis.

But it’s a solvable one if Congress just does its job.

The complete abdication of responsibility by Republican elected officials is particularly striking. These are legislators who routinely trumpet their constitutional authority and rail against unelected bureaucrats. Yet when faced with an unelected billionaire dismantling government agencies, they’re reduced to begging for advance notice of his decisions.

Consider Senator Boozman’s remarkably tepid response:

“I know he wants to make the government more efficient, but I do think we want to be informed as to what’s going on so when we’re asked about it we’re able to think about it and understand why and explain what the purpose is,” said Sen. John Boozman (Arkansas), who had never met Musk before the lunch.

This from a man who has spent a quarter century in Congress, over half of that in the Senate. Boozman knows — or should know — that Congress, not some big donor tech executive, has constitutional authority over government spending. His meek acceptance of Musk’s authority, asking only to be “informed” about decisions he should be making, represents a stunning surrender of congressional power.

And just the idea that any of this is made any better by Musk giving his mobile phone number to officials is bizarre. Beyond the constitutional absurdity, there are serious security implications. Is this Musk’s personal mobile phone? Is it a government phone? Is it secure? Is it compromised?

But, just take a step back here and put this in perspective. Even if you think that DOGE is actually uncovering some amazing waste, fraud, and abuse (it’s not) and that Musk is magically saving many billions in wasted taxpayer funds (he’s not), no system of government should work this way:

1. Install a President deeply indebted to the world’s richest man
2. Hand effective control of the entirety of the federal government to that same billionaire, who brings in inexperienced dipshit loyalists with sweeping access to sensitive data and unchecked power to dismantle federal programs
3. Watch as Congress voluntarily surrenders its constitutional oversight role
4. When the inevitable disasters occur, have elected Republicans (and, it appears, only Republicans) reduced to begging for the personal phone number of an advisor who the government swears has no authority, so they can plead for mercy and a reversal of decisions (only some of which are actually reversible).

It’s so stupid that if you wrote this up as a satirical Hollywood script, people would say it’s just too far out there. And yet, it’s the world we’re living in.

Speaking of “government-by-calling-Elon,” another report from last week involved an apparently hastily called cabinet meeting by Trump, after various (actually Senate approved) cabinet members were getting mad at Musk. And, once again, the answer seemed to be “hey, if you don’t like what I’m doing, call me.”

Mr. Duffy said the young staff of Mr. Musk’s team was trying to lay off air traffic controllers. What am I supposed to do? Mr. Duffy said. I have multiple plane crashes to deal with now, and your people want me to fire air traffic controllers?

Mr. Musk told Mr. Duffy that his assertion was a “lie.” Mr. Duffy insisted it was not; he had heard it from them directly. Mr. Musk, asking who had been fired, said: Give me their names. Tell me their names.

Mr. Duffy said there were not any names, because he had stopped them from being fired. At another point, Mr. Musk insisted that people hired under diversity, equity and inclusion programs were working in control towers. Mr. Duffy pushed back and Mr. Musk did not add details, but said during the longer back and forth that Mr. Duffy had his phone number and should call him if he had any issues to raise.

That’s right: When confronted with evidence that his team was trying to fire air traffic controllers during an aviation crisis, Musk’s response was essentially “just call me if there’s a problem.” This is how major policy decisions about aviation safety are now being made apparently — through casual phone calls to a tech billionaire with no official authority.

Seems like a problem?

The one thing about that meeting, though, is it shows that at least some of the cabinet is getting fed up with Musk. Indeed, the even larger story was that Musk and Rubio also clashed after Musk (again, with no authority) demanded Rubio fire a ton of people:

Seated diagonally opposite, across the elliptical mahogany table, Elon Musk was letting Mr. Rubio have it, accusing him of failing to slash his staff.

You have fired “nobody,” Mr. Musk told Mr. Rubio, then scornfully added that perhaps the only person he had fired was a staff member from Mr. Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.

Mr. Rubio had been privately furious with Mr. Musk for weeks, ever since his team effectively shuttered an entire agency that was supposedly under Mr. Rubio’s control: the United States Agency for International Development. But, in the extraordinary cabinet meeting on Thursday in front of President Trump and around 20 others — details of which have not been reported before — Mr. Rubio got his grievances off his chest.

To be fair, some reports suggest that Trump eventually told Musk to back off, saying cabinet members should have the authority here. But given Trump’s track record of occasionally saying the one thing to appease whoever is in front of him, before immediately reverting to whatever his biggest donor wants, it’s probably best not to get too excited about this particular moment of possible slight pushback on Musk.

The truth here is inescapable: we’ve allowed our constitutional system of checks and balances to be replaced by government-by-group-chat, where an unelected billionaire with no official authority wreaks havoc while elected officials desperately try to get him on the phone. The Republicans in Congress and the cabinet have both the constitutional authority and duty to stop this. Instead, they’re competing to get on Musk’s speed dial while he dismantles the institutions they swore to protect.

And that’s the real problem: It’s not just that Musk is overstepping — it’s that our constitutional officers are letting him. They have the power to stop this. They’re just choosing not to use it. Maybe someone should give them a call about that.

Filed Under: constitutional crisis, doge, donald trump, elon musk, sean duffy, tom cole