From the New York Times, this is the Daily.
I'm Rachel Abrams.
Today, Elon Musk and his team have taken a hacksaw to the federal bureaucracy.
One agency at a time.
And the question has become whether he's on a crusade that will leave the government paralyzed
or deliver exactly the kind.
Of shakeup it's needed for years.
My colleague Jonathan Swan takes us inside.
This hostile takeover of Washington.
It's Wednesday, February 5th.
So Jonathan,
we always understood that Elon Musk was going to be important in this administration in the second Trump presidency.
Trump had given the group that Musk was put in charge of, the Department of Government Efficiency,
or DOGE, as it's commonly known, the job of shrinking the entire federal government.
But the question was always just how much power Musk would actually have
as a private citizen operating outside the president's cabinet.
And over the past few days, we've actually started to get an answer, which is a whole lot of power.
Yes, his power is extraordinary.
He effectively is unaccountable.
Donald Trump has fully empowered him to roam across the federal government,