Federal Workers Can Defeat Musk’s Coup. Here’s How.

Who can stop Elon Musk? Even though it’s illegal for him to seize control of federal agency finances to slash the workforce, a Republican Congress is unlikely to assert its legally mandated prerogatives. Nor has any serious opposition emerged from the Democratic Party. And while the courts have paused some of this power grab, there’s no guarantee that our hyper-conservative Supreme Court will seriously oppose it. Moreover, Musk’s wrecking crew can impose a huge number of cuts while legal proceedings wind their way through the courts.

But all is not lost: Musk is actually very vulnerable to popular backlash. As Jonathan Martin of Politico points out, Trump is likely to throw Musk’s project to the wolves once it starts generating too much bad press. If working people can turn the tide of popular opinion squarely against Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE), it’s likely to meet the same fate as the administration’s unpopular funding freeze.

Escaping this crisis will depend, above all, on the actions of federal workers.

No matter which lackeys Trump and Musk install at the top of these agencies, they still ultimately depend on the labor of their employees. And workers’ resistance has already put a wrench in Musk’s operations. Refusing to succumb to intimidation, unions of federal employees have sued to stop Musk. And with union encouragement, most federal workers have rejected DOGE’s so-called buyout scheme through which they would “voluntarily” resign.

These are important first steps. But it’s going to take a lot more organizing and pressure from these workers to win.

Changing the Narrative

Wide-scale, attention-grabbing collective actions can drive home to the public the truth about federal workers and the danger of Musk’s cuts. Far too many people don’t know crucially important facts about federal employees and the services they provide:

— Due to Trump’s budget chaos, health clinics across the US have already been forced to close.

— Musk’s reckless operation threatens enormous numbers of Americans. Without federal workers at sufficiently funded agencies, no one in the US would be able to receive benefits such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, or workplace safety protections, among many other essential services. Local schools and hospitals all across the country also depend on federal funding.

— Contrary to right-wing claims about a massively expanded federal bureaucracy, the percentage of the American workforce working for the federal government has declined significantly over the

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