A coup d'etat in the United States.

Now, you might arch your eyebrows and ask, how did I miss that one then?

You might not have noticed any tanks in the streets or dissidents thrown in prisons or any firing squads or declaration of martial law.

But Elon Musk, the richest man on earth, a South African-born businessman who not a single American citizen has voted for, has been placed in charge of the Department of Government Efficiency, or Doge, with a supposed mandate to slash away government spending.

Now, one of Donald Trump's many executive orders instructed all government agencies to grant Doge full and prompt access to all

unclassified agency records, software systems and IT systems. But note this, Doge isn't a government

agency. It's supposed to be merely advisory. And yet it has been turned into the absolute

centerpiece of this entire administration. Now, Musk is now leading a massive purge

of the government bureaucracy while seizing control of the Treasury Department's $6 trillion payment

system. That now means Musk has his mitts all over the social security numbers and indeed

general personal and financial information of American taxpayers. If there is a federal

employee who displeases this administration, they can simply cease paying them. Musk has also

taken over the General Services Administration, which underpins the basic functioning of federal

government agencies, and the Office of Personnel Management, which manages the US Civil Service.

What does this all mean?

Well, as the Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren put it in a letter to the Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, controlling the system could allow the Trump administration to unilaterally and illegally cut off payments for millions of Americans,

pulling at risk

the financial security of families and businesses based on political favouritism on the

whims of Mr Musk and those on his team who have worked their way inside.

What next?

Now, there is USA to US government's $40 billion a year international development agency.

Now, there are all sorts of good and important leftist critiques of USAID about its role

...