Teapot DOGE: Elon Musk And The New Gilded Age— Make Graft Great Again

The Billionaire, the Buffoon And The Looting Of The Republic

Do you think it’s a manifestation of extreme corruption that Musk’s regulatory problems have started to fade into the past? “Since the start of the second Trump administration,” wrote David Ingram, “federal agencies that had scrutinized Musk and his business empire in recent years have begun to look a lot different. At the Department of Agriculture, for example, Trump fired the person who had been investigating the Musk company Neuralink. At other agencies including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Trump and Musk have tried to slash the number of employees— potentially hobbling those regulators’ ability to enforce the law against companies including Musk’s Tesla and Twitter. In the past few months, Trump’s Justice Department has dropped a case against Musk’s rocket company, SpaceX, and his Labor Department has canceled a planned civil rights review of his automaker, Tesla. Another regulatory matter against SpaceX has entered settlement talks with the National Labor Relations Board. And in more than 40 other federal agency matters, regulators have taken no public action on their investigations for several months or more— raising questions about whether those cases may have become dormant, according to an NBC News review of regulatory matters involving Musk’s companies. Those matters range widely, from safety investigations into Tesla’s ‘self-driving’ features to alleged workplace safety violations at SpaceX.”

Jon Michaels, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, and an expert on administrative law, said he wouldn’t be surprised if federal agencies are slow-walking the 40-plus ongoing matters involving Musk’s companies.

“You’re not just going against Elon Musk. You’re going against Elon Musk who’s puppeteering large swaths of the federal government,” he said, referring to Musk’s sweeping role as a White House adviser for the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

He added that some individual federal workers may fear for their safety due to Musk’s documented pattern of singling out people for criticism on his massive social media platform even if they’re largely unknown.

And while other Republican presidents have also loosened environmental rules or labor law enforcement, Michaels said this time is different because of Musk’s personal involvement in taking a chainsaw to the federal government.

“The administrative state as we traditionally understand it will be incapacitated,” he said.

The moves may help Musk’s companies avoid potential fines for alleged violations of federal law. At stake is more than $2 billion in potential liability, plus workplace changes that Musk could have to make if he loses those regulatory fights, according to a recent report by Senate Democrats.

Some agencies have also helped Musk’s businesses by relaxing written regulations. Last month, the Transportation Department lowered the threshold for self-driving car companies including Tesla to report safety incidents, and this week, the Federal Aviation Administration granted permission for SpaceX to perform 25 launches per year of its massive Starship, a fivefold increase, despite impacts on the environment and air travel.

Regulators’ new hands-off approach is one of the most tangible rewards for Musk and potentially other business executives after many of them threw their support behind Trump’s campaign last year to regain the White House. Musk, the world’s wealthiest person, spent around $290 million to help Trump and fellow Republicans and has served as a White House adviser to Trump since January. Musk has said he plans to largely return to the tech world over the next few weeks.

…The changing regulatory environment comes as Musk stands to benefit in other ways from the new administration, including potentially new or expanded contracts for his satellite internet service Starling and for his rocket service SpaceX. Reuters reported last month that SpaceX is a front-runner to help build  Trump’ss “golden Dome” missile defense shield, a system to stop hostile missiles aimed at the country.

…The decisions to drop the regulatory actions fulfill the predictions of experts last year who said Musk’s companies would likely benefit under Trump’s regulators, and the changed landscape means that when Musk turns his attention back to his tech companies, he’ll operate with fewer constraints than before. Musk said on a Tesla earnings call on April 22 that his time commitment to DOGE would “drop significantly” starting in May as he allocated more of his time to Tesla.

Cary Coglianese, a law professor and the director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Program on Regulation, said Musk is not alone among business executives who are benefiting from Trump’s regulators.

“This is an administration that’s slowing down enforcement processes across the board. So, is he getting special treatment? Or is he getting just the kind of relaxed regulatory scrutiny that any business might enjoy under the Trump administration? That’s a hard question to answer,” he said.

But he added that the pattern is suspicious if it holds, and he said Musk hasn’t navigated ethical questions the way past White House advisers have. Musk has kept his private sector roles, including as CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, while serving as a “special government employee.” That’s a category of temporary federal worker that includes many more people than just Musk, although unlike with others, there’s no evidence that Musk hs filed paperwork outlining the steps he’s taken to avoid conflicts of interest.

“As a citizen, I have to say it looks like there might be some special treatment, and as a citizen, I should probably be worried about even the appearance of special treatment,” Coglianese said.

“We should hold those who are having influence over government policy to very high standards, and as long as he has ownership stake and managerial control of companies that are being investigated by or benefiting from the work of government agencies, it certainly is, if nothing else, the appearance of illegitimacy,” he said.

…Of the 11 federal agencies that Senate Democratic researchers identified as investigating Musk’s companies as of January, most of them such as the Federal Aviation Administration have suffered cutbacks from Musk’s DOGE. Trump’s budget blueprint released earlier this month could portend further cuts.

In January, Trump fired the inspector general of the Agriculture Department, Phyllis Fong. One of the investigations her office had been working on was a probe of Neuralink, Musk’s brain science startup, for carrying out experiments in ways that allegedly caused suffering and unnecessary death for animals, according to Reuters. It’s unclear if that investigation is ongoing, and the USDA IG’s office did not respond to a request for comment. A lawyer for Fong also did not respond to a request for comment.

…Trump and Musk’s DOGE have attempted to drastically downsize the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which is charged with protecting Americans from financial fraud. The bureau has received more than 100 complaints about Tesla over the past year, mostly related to vehicle leases or loans offered or issued by Tesla, and it still had about 30 open or unresolved complaints about Tesla as of last week, according to the CFPB website… Musk has called for ending the CFPB entirely, posting in February on Twitter: “CFPB RIP” with a gravestone emoji.

Trump has attempted to remove two Democratic members of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which polices discrimination in hiring. It’s unclear whether those moves could disrupt a lawsuit filed by the EEOC in 2023 against Tesla over alleged racial harassment at a factory in Fremont, California. A hearing in that lawsuit is scheduled for June, and Trump’s authority to fire EEOC commissioners without cause is also being challenged in court.

This blockbuster NBC News piece really opens the door to a wider— and pretty chilling— discussion about the entanglement of capital, celebrity, corruption and state power in the Musk-Trump axis. Is it so far-fetched to imagine Musk’s sudden elevation of DOGE as a piece of that same corrupt architecture Trump grifterstan? DOGE was a joke coin, a memetic sideshow to Bitcoin and Ethereum’s attempts at economic seriousness. It was designed to parody speculative finance— yet Musk seized it and transformed it into a plaything of the ultra-rich, a tool to manipulate markets on a whim. His tweets alone have caused massive spikes and crashes in DOGE’s price, redistributing wealth from gullible retail investors to early adopters and insiders.

We should ask: why DOGE? Why did the richest man in the world adopt this ridiculous cryptocurrency instead of backing something with real-world utility or decentralized promise? Because DOGE doesn’t pretend to have a moral center. It's perfect for the kind of man who wants to test how far his influence can distort reality. In that sense, DOGE became less about finance and more about sovereignty— Musk demonstrating that with the right platform, the right cult of personality, and enough capital, he can effectively create value ex nihilo. The state, the market, and now even money itself become responsive to his whims.

And this is where it ties directly into the authoritarianism of Trump’s second term. The regulatory state melting away before Musk isn’t just corruption— it’s a sign of something deeper. It's the consolidation of a techno-capitalist aristocracy, one that operates above public scrutiny and legal accountability, capable of minting its own currencies and immunizing itself from oversight. DOGE may look like a joke, but its function is deadly serious: it’s a trial balloon for a future in which financial systems are decoupled from democratic control and tethered instead to the charisma and influence of individual oligarchs.

Many people speculate that the primary motivation for Musk’s involvement in DOGE may have been to alleviate regulatory pressure on his business empire. By wielding influence within the regime, Musk strategically positioned DOGE to weaken federal agencies that have historically scrutinized his companies. He definately saw DOGE as a tool to reshape the regulatory landscape in favor of his companies. His unprecedented role as a special government employee with DOGE, coupled with his close alliance with Trump and the GOP, points to a motivation to cement his political influence. The dismissal of cases and relaxation of rules make it clear that Musk is leveraging DOGE to secure a favorable position within the administration, not just for himself but for his broader business ecosystem. Is he seeing DOGE as a platform to institutionalize his influence over federal policy, ensuring long-term benefits for his companies even as he plans to “largely return to the tech world?” His ability to shape agency leadership and reduce agency staffing indicates a strategic effort to create a government more aligned with his interests. 

This consolidation of power risks undermining democratic accountability. Musk’s unelected role in DOGE, combined with his social media influence, creates a chilling effect on regulators. The lack of public action on all those investigations suggests agencies may be “slow-walking” cases, as Michaels speculates, either due to direct pressure or fear of repercussions. This dynamic will erode the administrative state’s ability to enforce laws impartially, while Musk gets to work on his broader ideological goal introducing techno-libertarianism or techno-authoritarianism. The aggressive staff reductions, agency closures, and relaxed regulations reflect a vision of a leaner government that imposes fewer constraints on technological “progress.” His public statements about “defeating bureaucracy” and his exploration of blockchain for DOGE’s operations suggest he sees government reform as a tech-driven challenge. He may claim to be motivated by a belief that regulation stifles innovation, a view informed by his experiences with Tesla’s self-driving scrutiny and SpaceX’s environmental reviews while DOGE serves as a testing ground for applying private-sector principles to government, reducing human oversight and aligning federal operations with his technological priorities. His push for deregulation is bound to accelerate the adoption of his companies’ often unproven technologies. The relaxation of environmental and safety regulations mirrors his long-standing critiques of “regulatory overreach.” There’s no doubt that his agenda risks prioritizing corporate interests over public safety and welfare.

What we’re witnessing isn’t just regulatory collapse— it’s the ceremonial coronation of oligarchy. Musk’s entanglement with the Trump regime channels the same brazen corruption that defined the Republican presidencies of the 1920s, but with the volume cranked up and the pretense stripped away. In place of oil leases and backroom deals, we now have rocket launches, meme coins, and algorithmic psyops. DOGE is his Teapot Dome— absurd, cartoonish, and grotesquely effective. The state no longer merely favors capital; it now submits to it, bends to its whims, and erases its transgressions in real time. Musk is no longer just a billionaire playing with toy currencies— he’s a sovereign technocrat, leveraging influence not to innovate, but to dominate. And Trump’s regime, like Harding’s before it, is more than happy to hold the door open as the public trust is looted in broad daylight. What we’re living through is not the future; it’s a reboot of the past, minus the shame. Musk is a symbol of how decadence, corruption and unchecked tech power can fuse with authoritarian politics to create something dangerously new and grotesquely familiar.

And while we’re poking around the regime’s most blatant corruption, this morning Andrew Desiderio reported that Chris Murphy is forcing an on-the-record vote on U.S. weapons sales to Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, “citing both governments’ efforts to curry favor with Trump through his (and his family’s) business interests. ‘Congress should have a full debate over selling weapons to countries that are participating in the corruption of our government,’ Murphy told us… Senators can force votes on joint resolutions of disapproval with the goal of blocking proposed weapons sales to foreign nations— though this would require veto-proof majorities in both chambers in order to have real force.”

The “Palace in the Sky” the Qataris are using as a bribe for Trump is “is likely unconstitutional. Separately, we’re told that Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) plans to introduce a resolution today condemning the gift transfer and will try to pass it on the floor later this week. Here’s more from Murphy: ‘Donald Trump is selling off America’s foreign policy and national security to the highest bidder and isn’t even bothering to cover it up. Any deal he strikes on this trip can be called into question based on Trump’s personal conflicts of interests.’… In addition to the gift from Qatar, it was recently revealed that the United Arab Emirates is pouring $2 billion into Trump’s cryptocurrency venture. The move helped stall stablecoin legislation in the Senate last week after Democrats raised conflict-of-interest concerns.”