Dem
47
GOP
53
Co-Presidents Donald Trump and Elon Musk held their first cabinet meeting yesterday. Guess who dominated it. (Hint: He is not a member of the cabinet.)
Oh, and some "members" present haven't been confirmed, but legalities like the Senate's power of advice and consent are so 20th-century.
Musk talked for a long time about how DOGE is eliminating fraud and waste. And he was not talking about the Army paying $400 for hammers. He was talking about getting rid of entire departments and programs that Congress authorized but which he didn't happen to like. Some of the secretaries were not amused about an unelected businessman who has not been confirmed to anything basically giving them marching orders, but they didn't complain. In fact, the secretaries said almost nothing. Musk and Trump did all the talking. This is very different than in previous administrations, when the secretaries at Cabinet meetings talked about difficult issues in their departments, especially issues that cut across department boundaries. Yesterday, the secretaries were more like the audience at a theater than participants in the governing process.
The rubber hasn't really hit the road yet, but when Musk directly orders some cabinet secretary to fire [X] thousand workers or cut his or her department's budget by $[Y] billion, it could get testy. It probably won't take long, as Musk aims to cut $1 trillion from the $6.7 trillion federal budget. In some cases, the hit won't be noticed for a while. For example, EPA administrator Lee Zeldin said he could reduce head count by 65%. What that would mean is that companies could pollute the air and water at will without anyone watching them. Cancer rates might go up in a few years, but it would be hard to pin that on Musk.
Will Musk's cuts actually reduce the deficit, as some House members want? It is unlikely, because Trump wants major tax cuts, which together may exceed the amounts Musk can cut.
Trump also made an announcement during the meeting. He said that he was going to impose a 25% tariff on imports from the European Union. He said the decision has already been made and would be announced very soon. The E.U. was expecting this and has already prepared a list of retaliatory tariffs, specifically designed to cause the maximum pain to Trump's supporters. In Trump v1.0, when this happened, Trump simply asked Congress for $28 billion in free money for his supporters (farmers, etc.) so they wouldn't get angry at him. He could do that again, although with such a small margin in the House, the deficit hawks might be able to kill it.
Toward the end of the meeting, Trump said: "Is anybody unhappy? I think everyone's not only happy, they're thrilled." We are less sure. Once the Cabinet secretaries realize that they have little to no actual power other than to decide which programs to strangle, we could hear some squealing, possibly followed by resignations. (V)