In the first weeks of Donald Trump’s second term in office, Elon Musk has been busy seizing control of instruments of government power, causing many to wonder who is really in charge. “Elon Musk is President,” The Atlantic ’s Jonathan Lemire declared. “There has never been a private citizen like him.”

China hits back with its own tariffs; Trump pauses tariffs on Mexico and Canada. China announced retaliatory tariffs on some U.S. goods immediately af

Musk, who last year said “things that inhibit freedom of exchange or distort the market are not good,” became $12 billion poorer Monday.

The party has struggled with how to respond to President Trump’s aggressive efforts to remake the federal bureaucracy and other controversies.

Killing USAID by contrast is, as experts have noted, a gift to Russia and China. It's a gift to Russia because the current largest line item the USAID budget goes to Ukraine, which has been as devastated by the Russian invasion as many of those European countries were by the Nazis in 1945.

Elon Musk's control of a federal payment system is raising concerns about funding for programs like Social Security and the safety of personal data.

The Treasury Department was accused of breaking federal law by giving Elon Musk’s team of government efficiency enforcers access to a trove of personal and financial information — setting up a legal showdown over the Trump administration’s signature effort to shrink the government.