Where are the guardrails for Musk?

Lisa Rein, Washington Post -   In less than a month, Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service has fired thousands of federal employees, frozen billions of dollars in funding, sifted through reams of private data and left many Americans with a simple question: How could this happen?

The breakneck campaign to eviscerate the U.S. Agency for International Development, hobble the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and give young tech engineers access to sensitive computer systems — among them the trillion-dollar payment systems for the entire government — have left many inside and outside the civil service stunned.

Federal agencies have long been seen as lumbering, rule-bound bureaucracies built on strict chains of command, protocols and safeguards — systems that critics blame for stymieing reform, but which also protect vital social safety nets and national security by slowing or blocking quick change.

Until now.

The Musk-led cost-cutting commission and President Trump are seeking to challenge or circumvent some of the thousands of statutes that set the rules for government operations — rules contained in the 50-title Code of Federal Regulations. Experts in the civil service say the speed and scope of the change is an unprecedented challenge to these guardrails, many of which were never designed for this scenario. Although dozens of lawsuits have been brought against the administration’s actions to dismantle large swaths of the government, judges have issued mixed rulings and there may be limited avenues for employees to challenge decisions to oust them.

“We’re at a point where things are so unprecedented that it’s not even close to what was envisioned by any of the statutes that exist,” said Nick Bednar, a professor at the University of Minnesota Law School who specializes in the civil service. “We do have guardrails. But they assume moderately bad behavior. They don’t assume complete efforts to assault the traditional institutions of government.”