Trump Is Fueling a MAGA Civil War

The power struggle between the unelected & incompetent South African billionaire vs unqualified & incompetent Trump appointees is becoming public

On Saturday, Trump and Musk escalated their reckless interference in federal operations by emailing all federal employees with an arbitrary Monday midnight deadline. The demand? That every worker report five things they accomplished this week and copy their manager. [See image of email below].

My sources inside the federal government tell me that they are asked to email HR@opm.gov. So, whatever you do, please do NOT email HR@opm.gov with sarcastic nonsense to troll their incompetence. That would likely slow down this fascist regime and make them waste time sifting through fake emails. We cannot possibly risk making the Department of Government Efficiency (“DOGE”) less efficient. [sarcasm]

But once you’re done not sending a fake email to HR@opm.gov, also remember, this is not just bureaucratic foolishness; it’s a coordinated power grab that devastates the rights and safety of the American people, and we cannot stand by and let it happen unchallenged. Let’s Address This.

Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call via AP Images

The Growing MAGA Civil War

This current fiasco began when the South African billionaire tweeted this bizarre tweet (yes in this house we still call it Twitter and tweets), threatening to fire anyone who doesn’t respond to some forthcoming email.

Here’s the email following Musk’s tweet—who I remind you is not a government employee, was not elected to anything, and has no actual authority except what he purchased when he bought Trump the Presidency.

There is so much deeply problematic with this email—most of all that it makes zero actual sense whatsoever.

• What is considered an accomplishment?

• Who are they reporting this to?

• What is the measure of whether a task is completed or not?

• How does this make government more efficient?

• On what authority is someone who is not the direct supervisor of a given employee even asking these questions?

• On what grounds is failure to respond an automatic resignation?

The list of questions is endless. And the backlash is immediate. Federal institutions are already resisting and the battle over who actually runs the federal government is beginning. My contacts in the DOJ and FBI reported to me that their managers are outright canceling Musk’s directive—making it clear that they do not answer to Musk. One DOJ employee shared with me in confidence:

My manager immediately responded to us about Musk’s email with a directive to not respond to him. Also, that was the second email from Musk. The first email from Musk originally went to the spam folder of every DOJ employee.

So, to be sure, the man in charge of “government efficiency” had to send two pointless emails because he couldn’t figure out how to send it correctly the first time. How comforting that a man who doesn’t know how email works has unfettered access to every bit of sensitive data on government file.

Then there’s Kash Patel, Trump’s handpicked FBI Director, who sent an agency-wide rebuke to Musk, saying, "The FBI is in charge of all our review processes…When and if further information is required, we will coordinate the responses."

Translation: We are not playing Musk’s game.

The question now is this: Who will Trump listen to? His own unqualified but actually appointed representatives in the Federal government, or his own unqualified and unelected owner, Elon Musk? Who he decides to support in this MAGA civil war will navigate the direction of the federal government, and therefore our entire nation, for a generation or more.

But as we watch this civil war play out, two things are for sure. The American people will suffer the most, and Republicans are once again proving their incompetence.

Republicans Prove Their Own Incompetence

There’s a saying: Republicans claim government doesn’t work, then they get elected and prove it.

Consider the mess they’ve already created just through MUSK’s “DOGE” Team:

• DOGE demanded Federal employees snitch on their co-workers who are “engaging in DEI,” or face consequences themselves if they don’t snitch.

• DOGE hired a white supremacist who condemns ‘race mixing’ and wants segregation reinforced. He was outed and quit, and then Musk rehired him despite knowing he’s a white supremacist.

• DOGE hired a wholly unqualified candidate who had been fired from a previous job for leaking confidential information, and then proceeded to give this person access to our confidential social security information.

• DOGE fired nuclear experts, then scrambled to rehire them after realizing nuclear experts are a tad bit important to ensuring we don’t mishandle nuclear weapons.

• DOGE fired IRS experts, panicked because they forgot it is tax season, and thus tried to rehire them—only to realize they had canceled their IRS addresses and had no way to contact them because they didn’t have their personal addresses.

• DOGE gutted numerous federal agencies and pushed out career experts—a list much too long for one article—and ensured a brain drain that will further cripple government functions.

• And now DOGE is forcing people to report their work to some anonymous entity, or else, creating major opposition from Trump’s own handpicked appointees.

All of this means the American people suffer the most. It is no accident that 9 of the top 10 states that rely most on Federal welfare, have the highest poverty rates, have the highest per capita gun deaths, have the highest rates of infant and maternal mortality, and have the lowest life expectancies, are all GOP run states. The Trump MAGA movement now seeks to impose those failed policies on the Federal level.

But moreover and to be clear, it would be a mistake to assume this is incompetence alone. While incompetence certainly plays a big part, the broader goal is to manufacture dysfunction in the federal government, then use that dysfunction as an excuse to gut agencies and further dismantle public services. This is the same playbook they always use:

1. Create chaos by dividing people in and out of government

2. Blame “big government” for the very problems they engineered

3. Destroy the very agencies designed to protect the American people (e.g. the CFPB, the CDC, the NIH, the SEC, and more)

4. Install oligarchs to privatize industries that should not be privatized, then centralize profit, power, and control beyond the next election

This is the autocrat’s playbook, and Trump is following it verbatim.

Speaking of, does Trump have to respond to Musk’s “efficiency” email too? Because according to https://trumpgolftrack.com, Trump has already spent more than 27% of his Presidency golfing. When will the so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” recognize that likely the most inefficient person in the Federal government right now is Trump himself? But then again, hypocrisy is Donald Trump’s middle name.

Source: https://trumpgolftrack.com/

Conclusion

I will keep pointing out this fact because we can never forget that Musk is not an elected official and has no expertise in governance—except when it comes to extracting tens of billions in taxpayer money for his private ventures. He should not be making demands of public employees. And yet, too many elected officials continue to bow to him rather than serve the American people.

We need to demand that our representatives stop capitulating to an unelected, unqualified, incompetent oligarch, and instead focus on protecting democracy, upholding expertise, and ensuring that government functions for the people. Please continue to call your federally elected officials and demand they stop this madness. And please do not make the mistake of only calling your Democrat electeds—be sure to call your Republican members of Congress as well. Let them hear your voice and feel your anger at their capitulation to a corrupt oligarch, rather than their service to the American people.

As a human rights lawyer, I will continue to document and call out these injustices, and I need your support to do so. Stay engaged, stay informed, subscribe, share this content, and let’s fight back—together.