Look what happened. Is this crazy? We stand on the verge of the four greatest years in the history.

Make America great victory. How can you be against them?

Welcome to Sidebar from the Washington Post. I'm Libby Casey, senior news anchor, here with Rhonda Colvin, senior political correspondent,

and James Holman, columnist.

We'll call you senior columnist, James.

Today we're focused on really one big story in Washington, the Trump administration's efforts

to hugely downsize the federal government, and this is being led by Elon Musk and the Department

of Government Efficiency or Doge. They seem to be trying to hit the delete key on large swaths of the

federal workforce and the programs that those people work for, including the Department of Education,

foreign aid programs and offices that were designed

and created to protect American consumers.

So we'll get into some of the huge federal programs that are now under threat and how gutting

or outright eliminating them would affect people, both here in the United States and around

the world.

But let's start with the how. How are Elon Musk and

Doge taking over large parts of the government and is it legal? James, what power does Elon Musk

have as the head of this new entity, the Department of Government Efficiency? Essentially, his power

to the extent he has it comes through Donald Trump and the confidence

of Trump.

I think that there's this desire by Trump, certainly to turn Musk into some kind of distinct

entity.

But essentially, he is doing Trump's bidding.

...