Dean's profile - The Motte

Dean Flairless 7mo ago · Edited 7mo ago

Do you anticipate large scale (50%+) reductions across most agencies,

Not really, no.

Reduction in force applicable consistent with applicable law runs into the point that applicable law is what authorizes and appropriates for those work forces. Moreover, the OPM memo makes some, hm, substantial carve outs.

VI. Exclusions Nothing in this memorandum shall have any application to:

Positions that are necessary to meet law enforcement, border security, national security, immigration enforcement, or public safety responsibilities;
Military personnel in the armed forces and all Federal uniformed personnel, including the U.S. Coast Guard, the Commissioned Corps of the U.S. Public Health Service, and the Commissioned Officer Corps of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; ...
The U.S. Postal Service. Finally, agencies or components that provide direct services to citizens (such as Social Security, Medicare, and veterans’ health care) shall not implement any proposed ARRPs until OMB and OPM certify that the plans will have a positive effect on the delivery of such services.

So if you're not even touching the Department of Defense (which according to google has about 1/3rd of the non-military government labor force, or 30%) and you're not touching the postal service (one fifth, or 20%), in just two carve outs you've already exempted over 50% of the government's non-military employee base. And on top of that, if the analysis of the welfare state cuts is that cutting hurts, don't.

There is an expression that when you look in terms of overall budget, the US is either a welfare state with the world's biggest military, or a military with a welfare state. The welfare state is the dominant part of the budget by far, and most of that spending is automatic based on eligibility and not discretionary spending. Of the discretionary spending, about half is on defense.

and how does this square with the proposed budget that will apparently add trillions in debt? What am I missing?

Trump is not a fiscal conservative.

Trump is in an alliance with fiscal conservatives, who believe that cutting the scale government is key to reducing / reigning in government spending. In turn, these fiscal conservatives don't believe that the military should be cut, but tend to believe the better way to control military spending is to avoid various conflicts (like Ukraine support).

There is a confluence of interests in that Trump wants to cut the government because he views it as a basis of resistance (because the Democrats loudly boasted of the fact last time around), and the fiscal conservatives see it as an opportunity to cut back the regulatory state (which includes advocating for / overseeing constant expansions of entitlemet spending).

I'm most interested in how all this shakes out politically. You can fire all these people, but when these salaries amount to a tiny fraction of the budget and is an easily exploited issue for your enemies (e.g., firing veterans and people close to retirement never looks good),

This is why the framing has been 'efficiency' and 'waste' rather than the people executing them per see. USAID was publicized in the way it was because it was an easy scalp with a number of silly things to point at. Discussing the waste in turn distracts from who was administrating those actions.

This is also why OPM's memo talks in terms of 'redundancies' and 'low performers.' If a veteran is fired because they were a bad worker, the political salience is lost if it turns into some form of 'bad worker says he shouldn't be fired because he's a veteran.'

and there isn't much progress in reducing consumer prices,

None of these parts are about consumer prices, which themselves have a politically priced-in expectation of rising due to the trade barrier disputes.

Setting aside the end of some artificially low prices that were pursued last year for domestic political advantage (such as the Biden administration cutting off LNG exports in 2024, which forced the gas to be sold domestically for cheaper domestic industry and all that matters), Trump's base generally has priced in that trade disputes mean short-term issues for longer-term improvements.

The less politically engaged may not, but that won't matter as much for another two years.

you'd think the House and Senate could easily flip in two years.

Again, priced in.

Which is why Trump and Musk and such are going in quick and hard. They have probably built in the assumption they won't be able to make such cuts later. Trump is a lame duck president regardless, and you should generally expect the governing part to lose their trifecta quickly.

I endorse Monzer's interpretation that a fair bit of the recent discord is basically just a smoke screen / distraction at some proposals to cut more politically popular things which amount to larger fractions of the budget.

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Dean Flairless 7mo ago

I agree that another USAID-sized scalp is unlikely. I also think that the social spending cuts are where the real money are. I'd even agree that DOGE and USAID are basically a smokescreen / firecracker diversion- the loud sparkly distraction to the much more substantitive cut that couldn't be done without it.

I think there are other scalp areas to pull, though I think it's far more likely to be in collaboration with agency heads rather than in antagonistic opposition to them.

The USAID takedown was not-so implicitly staged (physical resistance in a non-working Sunday in DC, for Rubio to be appointed on Monday?) over the access to the data networks, using the executive authority card borrowed from Trump. This was part of the Trump Administration's establishment of control over the information space (literally) of the executive branch, and to demonstrate formal control over the information.

This establishes precedent that allows / enables / 'forces' Department Heads to grant some level of access to DOGE to various networks for program reviews. And these, in turn, 'force' Trump appointees- many viewed with skepticism or hostility- to either go along with unpopular things ('I can't help it, DOGE made me), or- as in the case of the OPM- champion their agency against the DOGE. (See the OPM email- bad from a DOGE-independent-power perspective, good for making alignment with the agency head seem good for continued employment as a protector.)

I'm all on board with the kayfabe, and suspect that going forward access to data won't be so confrontational, and DOGE will often happen to identify areas that Secretaries and such won't be so unhappy to 'have' to cut.

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Dean Flairless 7mo ago

We are in full agreement! I endorse your elaboration.

The premise that DOGE can fire anyone derives from a misreading of the USAID takedown. That created confusion / alarm, but the idea that Musk had firing authority over anyone, even Trump's appointees, is a misreading.

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Dean Flairless 7mo ago · Edited 7mo ago

...le sigh, that is not a stupid question, but it is not a simple answer either, but I feel obliged to elaborate.

And so, let us explore the nuances and limitations of dual-hatting institutional positions. And also how USAID was dismantled under a dual-hat institutional takeover, but not by DOGE.

Part 1: Can the Chief Executive of the United States be Middle Management of the Executive Branch?

Yes, but really no. The biggest issue preventing Trump from taking other administrator posts is that he already has too much to do to take another full-time job.

A senior leader holding a middle manager job would make things simpler in the same sense that things would get simpler if your boss was fired so that your boss's boss became yours and every other team leader's direct supervisor. The issue with that is that the middle-manager exists for a reason. A lot of reasons, really, those reasons being to take care of things so that the higher manager doesn't have to. That why the middle manager exists, and is delegated the authorities needed.

If you replace the middle manager with a senior leader you have the senior leader to take all the roles of the middle manager- which in turn distracts them from the already very busy schedules of a senior leader. This isn't a problem that can be delegated away either, since if you delegate roles and responsibilities, you are just re-creating the middle manager job.

It's not that executives can't micro-manage things. A leader can often increase or decrease delegated authorities, refusing to delegate things they want to approve personally. The issue is that doing so takes time that cannot be spent on other things.

At which point, rather than take the middle manager's role, you could just delegate necessary authorities downward to the person already in the job. But if you were willing to do that, you wouldn't need to dual-hat in the first place.

So the thing preventing the President from holding other posts is that he doesn't want to, nor does he have to. If he wanted to empower people, he could delegate the authority to do so- or have someone else hold down two jobs.

Part 2: What is Dual Hatting?

Dual-hatting refers to the practice of having one person hold two institutional leadership roles at the same time. This often in terms of having a primary job and a secondary job, but with the two jobs existing in different institutional leadership roles, each supported by different staffs and institutional support networks.

I.E., if you Dual Hated the Department of Education and Department of Sanitation, the dual-hatted department head would have the institutional expertise of janitors on one hand, and education on the other.

Dual-hatting is, in turn, typically for horizontal integration purposes, rather than vertical. While it exists to allow for some vertical hierarchical 'shared boss,' it is doing so to facilitate cooperation between non-hierarchical institutions, who may not be 'equals' but are not formally subordinate. If they were, you could just issue orders downward to be followed.

But, again, senior leaders in government are often very busy if they are taking their jobs seriously, and often even if they are not (since they are doing funner things instead). Dual hatting a leader means the leader has to sit in the necessary meetings for both organizations, which is easily double the time. Which, in turn, leaves them less time to do the other things of either role.

As a result, dual-hatting is generally reserved for senior leaders and decision makers / approvers where two institutions must coordinate, but need to do so fast enough / avoid potential personality conflicts of two different people. So if Institution A has a policy effort that Institution B must approve and support, Head of Institution A directs A to Do The Thing, and then puts on their other hat and Approves Agency A's proposal in the position of Agency B and then directs Institution B subordinates to support.

A dual-hatted leader of both institutions can force cooperation / approve exceptions on behalf of both, without the issues / tradeoffs of merging the two institutions, which may not be politically possible, or even desirable.

Part 3: Why would you dual hat leaders? (Aside from leader bandwidth)

Other than the ability of someone to lead two institutions, dual hatting is generally done for fundamentally distinct institutions that aren't / can't / shouldn't be merged into a single institution.

These may be very distinct focus organizations that have very different needs and purposes but need to work together (a joint force of police and firefighters working to manage a city response to a major fire approaching; one group handles fires and the other people), subtly distinct organizations in the same supra-organization (Ministry of Military and Ministry of Police; both have guns and work for the same government ), or even organizations from completely different allegiances (City versus State versus National government employees working on Olympic Games security).

An example of this is multi-national military coalitions. If Country A is the leader of the coalition and gets to be the Commander, the Deputy Commander will often be one of the key secondary contributors, Country B. Both the Coalition Commander and Deputy Commanders, in turn, will probably be dual-hatted commanders of their respective component forces, since Country A wants its military reporting to its officer, and Country B wants its military reporting to its officer.

What this mean is that Coalition-Commander is Commander-Country A, and Coalition-Deputy-Commander is Commander-Country B. This, in turn, means Country A's military second-in-command (Deputy Commander of Country A forces) can't boss around the coalition B second-in-command, or vice versa, letting their respective command staffs work both in isolation (Country B running Country B's staff) and in coordination (Country A and Country B staffs working together for the Coalition) as appropriate. Country B is doing work for Country A not because Commander A said so, but because Commander B said to help Country A.

This may sound confusing, but it saves the headache of Country A having to conquer / annex / integrate Country B into Country A every time they want to have a coalition.

Now work that back to government agencies, and now you're not having the Minister of Police and Minister of Spies subsume one or the other each time they work together. Instead, they each designate someone to represent their ministry, and dual hat them in some way so they can are empowered in the joint effort and in their own contribution to the effort.

This could be a Joint Police - Spy counter-terrorism task force, where Dual Hatted police officer can order police elements, and Dual Hatted spy officer can order spy elements, without having to give your Minister of Spies control of the national police, or vice versa, neither of which you want to do in case someone gets ideas for creative combinations of these two parts of government. These arrangements are typically short, tactical, and mission-focused rather than shaping eachother's internal activities.

Part 4: Why Can't DOGE Dual Hat as the Secretary of [Whatever]?

Because Trump has appointed other people instead.

Since Trump can't credibly be the middle management (since it's the middle management), dual hatting would be between DOGE/Musk and whoever the agency in question is. This is where things start to make this a non-solution for Musk and DOGE, since this is where Congress starts to have a say.

In the US, a lot of the major departments of the government have Congressionally-approved heads, with the authorities of the agency explicitly delegated by Congress to the head of the agency or a specific position in the agency. For example- Congress gives authorities to the Department of Justice, and different authorities to the head of the FBI within the Department of Justice. To formally use those powers you need to be the Congressionally-approved person, or the interim actor.

Now, Interim/Acting directors aren't impossible. There are legal ambiguities on how much they can actually do without being confirmed, but it's not unknown for agencies to operate with Acting heads for long periods. This was even somewhat common in the last trump administration.

The issue is that even if you want to work from the position of being the Acting Director, you have to be the butt in the seat. And, as is becoming clear with the OPM emails, DOGE and the other Trump appointees are not one and the same.

For DOGE to dual hat as the secretary of [whatever], DOGE either needs to- (a) have one of its own get appointed as an Acting Director, or (b) recruit a sitting director to join them, giving Dual Hat authority in the reverse. And since part of the purpose of DOGE is to gut agencies, (b) is a hard sell.

Since Trump has appointed other people, and not DOGE, to these senior positions, it's safe to say Trump won't be firing them solely for not going along with DOGE.

What this means is that you won't have a dual-hat where DOGE+Musk are now the Secretary of Whatever. Instead, you have to have a dual hat relationship between DOGE and Department.

Part 5: Why is Dual Hatting a not the best idea anyway for DOGE?

The value of dual hatting really comes from well-defined institutional authorities, where Party A knows what they can/cannot do with regards to Party B, and vice versa. That way, the dual-hat position can be scoped in a way that both Parties agree to work together. After all, if the proposal was 'under this agreement, Party A can run Party B,' you might as well unify the institutions. You are only dual-hatting because you can't / won't.

The issue with DOGE and Musk is that it rests on ill-defined institutional authorities. No one knows what DOGE can or cannot do, because it has no defined powers outside of 'doing it on behalf of the President.'

This is very powerful in some respects. Presidents have a lot of authority to do what they prefer in the executive branch, when it's not otherwise mandated by law how they can / cannot do things. It also provides institutional leverage, because since no one knows what DOGE can't do, you aren't certain how much you must / cannot afford not to do.

But it also means that- absent any formal authority of DOGE to do certain things over a Department's will, it can only do said things with the authorities of the Department it is borrowing the hat of.

And this is where dual hatting does NOT solve the challenge of letting DOGE do whatever DOGE wants to do, because the dual-hatted position in the institution doesn't necessarily have the ability DOGE wants.

Part 6: What are the limits of dual-hatting?

Ultimately, the additional hat from dual hatting does not allow a leader to do things that were already forbidden, including overruling their boss of the new (or old) hat.

The Secretary of State, for example, does not have the legal authority to disband the Department of State and sell all the Embassies for pennies or other things. (This would require Congressional authorization, which has regulated restrictions for how the government can offload certain properties, to avoid corruption abuse.) Which means DOGE taking over the Secretary of State hat wouldn't allow DOGE to sell embassies either.

Which means the authority to do what the State Department couldn't would have to come from... DOGE. But if DOGE it had the authority independent of the State Department to sell the Embassies for pennies, it wouldn't need to dual hat to do so.

Further, the Secretary of State and similar positions are Congressionally confirmed positions. Which is to say, DOGE can't dual-hat as them without Senate approval. And if they dual hat as someone below the Secretary- say dual hat as the deputy Secretary of Defense- then the Deputy could be overruled by the Secretary, who has the authorities to overrule their Deputy as a matter of course.

And if the DOGE could already overrule the Secretary of State, they wouldn't need the dual hat from a subordinate of the Secretary.

Which, again, limits the value of the dual hat to what powers DOGE has independently, since any Department-gutting decision they can make can be overruled by the Secretary of the Department they are trying to gut.

Part 7: How do dual hats form?

Dual Hats are generally either appointed by a higher leader or negotiated between leaders.

If you have appointment power over a position, then dual hatting is as simple as appoint someone already in a position to take over the position. This is sometimes done as an interim / emergency measure, say that the Director of Y gets into a car crash, and so Administrator X appoints Director Z to take over the leadership position until a longer-term replacement is made. In this case, the dual hatting is temporary, and often disruptive, but just a matter of appointment.

If you do not have directive power- and DOGE does not have hiring or firing power over the rest of the government- you negotiate between institutions. And since the negotiations require consent- since if you had the authorities you wouldn't need the new hat- you are also negotiating limits.

This is why Dual Hat relationships are usually a result of negotiations between both institutional parties (governments, agencies, directorates, etc.), with pretty explicit Can Do This caveats where- if it is not agreed upon, it is not assumed to be conceeded. Whether that's governments defining the scope of how much influence the coalition commander has over other coalition members, or the limits of the authorities of the new-hat position. No one is going to sign over their budget to an outsider, give them control over hiring or promotions or so on. The potential for abuse (we chose to give ourselves bonuses with your budget) makes these non-starters.

And in such a negotiation, DOGE has a very weak hand, despite its implicit access to Presidential powers.

Implicit presidential support is not enough to dictate terms of a joint position, since the departments are also exercising implicit and even explicit executive and legislated legal authorities. Further, the dual-hated's authorities cannot exceed the Congressionally-supported Secretary who can veto it. At which point, DOGE / Musk either accepts the veto, or has to appeal to Trump to fire Trump's own appointee implementing Trump's own vision for the department.

Which means that- unless until Trump gives explicit support siding with DOGE over Department- DOGE can only negotiate for a Dual Hat role with what the Department is willing to concede. And here DOGE has little to offer, and seeks to take away much.

Which is why USAID offers a different dual hat model.

Part 8: How Dual Hat Destroyed USAID

In a policy sense, DOGE did not destroy USAID. The State Department is, through the power of the dual hat to wear USAID as a skinsuit.

What DOGE did was use its implicit presidential powers to set conditions for dismissal of existing USAID leaders to open up the appointment space for a State Department takeover, knowing it would have Congressional cover against blowback to pre-empt a judicial freeze.

The start of the USAID's dismantling was the attempt by senior USAID officials to block the DOGE from accessing USAID networks. This is the sort of context where DOGE's ambiguous but implicit presidential powers worked to its advantages, because when challenged Trump backed them.

While there is a legal argument that DOGE should not be allowed onto agency networks, especially classified ones, this is also where the role of Presidential powers allowing the President to pick sides comes into play. Ultimately, with a very narrow exception on Congressionally-mandated classification of things like nuclear secrets, the vast majority of American national security information belongs to the President. He can declassify at will, without prior approval or permission from anyone else. He also has basically unlimited access- and can bestow that access in turn- and no laws allow even independent executive branch agencies to deny the President access to His information, which entails his designated oversight agents. When Executive Agents A say the President requires them to do A (deny information to actor B), and Executive Agent B says the President requires them to do B (access information on behalf of the President), the President gets a say who is right... and who is obstructing his authority.

So when senior USAID leaders on a Sunday tried to physically bar DOGE from accessing USAID facilities and servers, it was they, and not DOGE, that were escorted from the building. And for trying to stop the chief executive oversight- which might or might not hypothetically lose them the trust and confidence of the President of United States required for the access to classified information required for their job- they were put on leave.

But if Senior Leaders are on leave, there is a need for new leaders- even if 'only' acting in the interim.

So when the events of 2 February opened up some gaps in USAID, on 3 February experienced government G-Man Marco Rubio was appointed as the Acting-Director of USAID, at least until a more permanent leader could be designated and approved by Congress. And by 4 February, was delegating USAID internal authorities to new leaders, including substantiative internal reorganizations.

That G-Man Acting Director Marco Rubio started federal service less than two weeks prior and happened to also be the formally approved Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was in the process of making his own appoints in the State Department as he asserted control of his new organization- no, the other one- is an example of dual-hatting.

If you are starting to wonder is maybe the new Acting Director Rubio is approving / appointing people selflessly proposed by Secretary State Rubio to help with USAID functions- people who may themselves be dual-hatting as Secretary of State and USAID roles at the same time- you're starting to see the power, and the threat, of dual-hat without limitations.

In part, these limitations don't exist for USAID because Congress has never legislated an internal structure dynamic to USAID. Unlike requiring the Department of Defense to have a certain number of military services, there is no similar requirement for USAID to be structured in certain ways. So while USAID is an 'independent agency' of sorts that can't be 'formally' absorbed by the State Department, there's nothing preventing the Administrator of USAID from reorganizing USAID to a 1-to-1 map of the state department organization chart to facilitate USAID-State Department cooperation, and incorporating dual-hat relationships that coincidentally make the leader of every USAID element a dual-hatted State Department appointee.

This is also comes with a bonus that it avoids significant legal issues on cross-department money spending. It would be Very Illegal for a State Department Employee to handle the USAID money.

But a USAID employee? Not so much. Just make sure you wear the right hat at the time.

This is why the 'save the USAID' lawsuits have instead focused on the freeze of grants in general, rather than the reorganization or who is making the call. But this is both getting into the nature of the grant-approval process- which, like with Classification, is not above review by the Chief Executive, and the fact that the consequence of a refusal to spend is less about the courts (who have very little ability to force the Executive to do a thing compared to issuing a bar to not do it) and more about Congress.

Whose main leverage is the power of the purse to cut off funds to the government if they are displeased.

But is currently controlled by a party that are is particularly displeased, with a minority party that would be displeased regardless

And who haven't even passed a full budget for the fiscal year, which could in turn happen to remove all those unspent funds anyway.

And who- even if they pass a budget demanding funds be spent on projects approved by USAID approvers, are over the next two years likely to find that the USAID approvers have relocated to State Department offices in desks that have a hat rack.

Is it a bureaucratic skin suit? Sure. Is it illegal? Not the reorganization part, at least.

But- notably- at none of these steps did DOGE dual-hat. DOGE was just checking in on things on behalf of the President.

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Dean Flairless 7mo ago

Speak to your audience, not just your subject matter. Additionally, never blame your audience for not understanding your point.

A lot of (good) advice is spent on the importance of brevity, but not as much on what to abbreviate to.

This leads to people shortening their [huge list of extensive background material and supporting argument] to [things], which in turn often leads to speakers focusing on [summarizing the things] rather than [the implication of things]. Worse, people often abbreviate to [things[that are interesting to them]] as opposed to [things[that are important to the audience]].

It is your job- as the speaker- to communicate what they need. If they already knew it, you wouldn't be wasting everyone's time saying it.

Distilling information is critical, but so is packaging it in ways the audience will understand.

Sometimes you need to distill the same mass of information into points suitable for highly knowledgeable subject matter experts, and then take the same information and distill it for people with no technical expertise but general familiarity. Sometimes you need to do it yet again for people who are so unfamiliar they might as well be high schoolers. Entire lines of argument or categories of information may be worse than useless depending on the audience, but counterproductive by confusing them or giving them wrong impressions.

It is, in turn, your job- as the speaker- to know your audience, and how to communicate to them. If they knew what you meant, and not what you said, you wouldn't be wasting everyone's time by saying it.

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Dean Flairless 7mo ago · Edited 7mo ago

This assumes the conclusion that Trump will back Musk over his department heads, regardless of what political costs Trump would pay. When Trump is also backing those department heads. That is, after all, why they are the department heads.

Which, in turn, leads to the natural policy level counter-play: to pit Trump against Musk, by having political allies in Congress- such as the Chairpersons of the committees who stand to lose if Musk has his way- to hold Trump's legislative agenda hostage in the senate. They hold Trump's agenda at risk if Trump fires Musk's target of the hour and clears the programs they cared about. Trump tells Musk to not get in the way of his (Trump's) priority.

At which point, you are transitioning to two separate additional limits on Musks' power: the requirement for active support from Trump, and the power of Congresscritters to trump Musk with Trump.

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Dean Flairless 7mo ago

Posted this further down, but it seems relevant enough to have been a top-post response.

Bottom line- I think this OPM email event has resulted in Musk undercutting himself and DOGE for the foreseeable future, and greatly reigned in its potential to reign in agencies without the backing of those agencies own leaders.

There were two groups of people who got emotionally invested in this OPM exchange and thought it was a serious threat- people who didn't understand from the start that Musk and OPM do not have HR power over the government (and so were afraid he could fire them for non-compliance with his OPM messages and changed their behavior accordingly), and people who wanted Musk and DOGE to benefit from a presumption of HR power over the government (including Musk). As far as DOGE's longer-term ambitions go, this interplay has significantly limited Musks' potential inter-agency influence going forward, by drawing the first of clear lines on the limits of his power.

Higher up in the thread, @ControlFreak mentioned a past poster who made a general point that good leadership entails never giving an order that will not be obeyed. The original poster was making a point on individual leadership and how if you have to appeal to formal authority as a basis of leadership you're probably not the 'real' leader. Between de jure and de facto power, de jure authority only matters if it can be translated into de facto impacts. A person with a formal title but who no one listens to isn't an actual leader.

In leadership in general, this means that there are some pretty hard limits to leadership that relies on coercion. The coercive powers may be considered legitimate / followed by others, but even within the organization in which that applies, it creates cultures of compliance where people (might) adhere to the point on the pain of punishment, but little more. Despite the economic theory that an avoided cost is worth as much [value] as a benefit, people who will work harder for the prospect of carrots tend to work as little as possible to avoid punishments. Even within organizations, where you can carry out threats of negative administrative actions, effective use of threats against compliance comes from being clear, limited, and not the primary means of influence.

Outside of an organization, where you cannot carry out threats, making demands / threats you cannot enforce is worse than bad practice- it actively makes your influence worse, by highlighting your impotence.

A significant part of the fear-factor surrounding Musk and DOGE are that there are (were) no clear limits to its power. As an agent of the Chief Executive, there are significant powers that come with the President's sanction, but not unlimited ones. Just to start, the power of the DOGE under the President cannot exceed the President's on authorities. Further, even the Presidency has limitations of what it can do internally- some of these deriving from a Constitutional level (such as the ability of Congress to regulate the military), and some from established law and case law (the executive branch having to go through certain processes when making / removing regulations). And in so much that the President does support someone, that person may have a lot of power in the Executive Branch... but the moment the President does not support someone, they have no authority. Live by the sword (of Chief Executive empowerment), die by the sword (of lack of Chief Executive empowerment).

So from the start, people knew- or should have known- that DOGE's power wasn't unlimited. However, it wasn't clear where the limits were. The takedown of USAID greatly heightened this fear, as if DOGE could take down an agency like USAID, what couldn't it do? Therefore, the fear of DOGE went along with the uncertainty of what it could do.

This incident has drawn a great big bold underline of at least one limit- the DOGE does not have HR power bypassing the Department Heads.

There are long and often historical reasons why this would be a Bad Idea regardless. The term 'chain of command' exists because the 'chain' is a visual metaphor of how one link may be higher, but does not directly touch the links below, i.e. does not bypass the intermediary links. This is so that superiors do not buy their subordinate intermediaries to micro-manage subordinate echelons (where the higher level leader is often disconnected from facts on the ground), and also so that subordinates do not bypass their direct superiors to appeal to the next-higher level leader unnecessarily (both undermining the leader and distracting the higher leader). Exceptions to bypassing the chain exist, but the chain exists for a reason, and so does the metaphor.

By making the power play and being refuted, Musk and DOGE has started to expose the limits of its power.

DOGE will not have direct interaction powers with employees, and thus not be able to leverage its institutional power for maximum advantage vis-a-vis individual workers. DOGE HR efforts will have to work through existing HR channels- which in turn means through, and with the support of, the Department heads who oversee such channels.

This, in turn, makes Musk / DOGE dependent on the cooperation of Department Heads whose departments he wants to cut down- which creates a direct contradiction in interests, since institutional power = authority x manpower x money, and DOGE shutting down sub-departments would decrease.

That doesn't mean such things won't happen- the Trump administration has appointed a lot of department heads with skepticism towards their own departments for a reason, so there probably will be grounds for cooperation if DOGE finds and raises an issue [Department Head] is sympathetic with. DOGE may also be able to pull another USAID scalp, by breaking down a quasi-independent organization (and, like USAID, nominally putting it into another department- which increases the department's potential institutional power).

But it also means that if DOGE/Musk come head to head with [Department]/[Department Head], Musk will either be blocked or have to appeal to Trump to override...

...and if/when Trump sides against Musk, that will be yet another nail tying down the limits of Musk/DOGE's influence.

For such an easily predictable- and I'm fairly sure predicted- sequence of events for an overreach, Musk started to dispel the ambiguous premise of power that DOGE depended on, and has starting revealing the outlines of his institutional influence. Not a good plan, given it was both unnecessary and will limit the credibility of his future threats, and something that anyone who opposes Musk should be thankful for Musk's decision to pick a fight with his nominal political allies, the department heads who just pushed his demand back in.

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Dean Flairless 7mo ago · Edited 7mo ago

As far as I can tell, the opponents here are all civil servants, so consider the opponents identified. It's not obvious to me how demanding snippets from them is outmaneuvering and I don't feel that it's been made clearer by this thread.

If anything, Musk was the one outmaneuvered by those who intend to resist him.