Elon Musk has formally left the White House and the Department of Government Efficiency, as he attempts to reset his image from haphazard budget slasher back to supposed tech visionary. Whether he actually leaves Washington or not, Democrats need to make sure that the next time they’re in power they hold him accountable for his disastrous tenure.
Before coming to Washington, Musk promised to deliver, via DOGE, at least $1 trillion in government savings. The billionaire delivered only a small fraction of that, and left a legacy, in the words of the New York Times’s Michelle Goldberg, of “disease, starvation, and death.”
A politics of no consequences is having dangerous and far-reaching effects.
As I detail in my recent book, Musk’s far-right politics complement his self-messianic view that only he can solve the problems facing the U.S. As his purchase and subsequent degradation of Twitter showed, this drive is stymied by his poor management and worse ideas. But at DOGE, operating with the backing of the president, he has been unconstrained by more rational actors.
The resulting attack on the federal government left agencies across the administration in chaos. DOGE’s assault on USAID in particular will have deadly ramifications on the world’s least fortunate for years, if not decades. Federal regulators in positions that could affect Musk’s businesses have been defunded, removed or otherwise cowed.
The full extent of the damage is still to be determined. DOGE smashed the walls put in place between agencies to protect the privacy of Americans and made it easier for federal officials to achieve full spectrum dominance of personal information. That information, in turn, is soon to be managed by the data processing and surveillance firm Palantir, a company co-founded by Musk ally Peter Thiel.
This raises a dilemma for Democrats if they retake Congress in 2026 and the White House in 2028: Since Musk continues to hold considerable influence in the executive branch, what should they do about this man’s destructive behavior if they retake power in the future?
The last two times Democrats won the White House, their victories came on the back of popular discontent with the incumbent GOP administration. In both cases, the Democratic base and the general public hoped that the new administration would take some action to hold their predecessors accountable. But that was not the case.
In January of 2009, incoming President Barack Obama rejected calls to investigate Bush administration programs such as domestic eavesdropping on U.S. citizens. “We need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards,” he told George Stephanopoulos just before taking office. And despite entering office just after the 2008 financial crisis, Obama’s administration declined to interrogate big banks’ culpability in the collapse.
Trump’s second administration has struck numerous blows against the rule of law and accountability.
For Biden, the need at the moment of his inauguration for criminal investigation and prosecution of Trump couldn’t have been clearer. After inciting a riot on Jan. 6, 2021, with dark warnings of election fraud and exhortations to a belligerent crowd to “fight like hell,” Trump was impeached — but too late to be removed from office. Biden could have directed the Justice Department to aggressively pursue justice against Trump, but instead appointed a slow-moving attorney general who seemed disinterested in taking decisive action and lost the momentum.
Today, Trump is acting with impunity, confident the law will not apply to him. Bolstered by a Supreme Court that has effectively delivered him carte blanche, the president is tearing the country’s political structures apart and remaking the nation in his far-right image. A politics of no consequences is having dangerous and far-reaching effects. That’s exactly the attitude the country can’t afford from the opposition party at this pivotal moment in American history. In order to move forward, we’ll need to clean up the past. Party leaders can jumpstart this new approach to wielding power with how they treat Musk. At the state level, Democratic lawmakers in states like California and New York should immediately begin dig into Musk’s malfeasance and how his companies have taken advantage of lax regulations and loopholes. Even in red states, there are opportunities to push state legislatures in Tennessee, Texas and Florida to at least confront how the billionaire’s business practices are damaging local environments, making people sick and leaving the public worse off than before his arrival. If Democrats retake the House or Senate, they’ll need to investigate what exactly the billionaire did with DOGE and how his management of it damaged U.S. interests. They should investigate his federal contracts and the extent to which the Trump White House funneled business his way — as may have happened with India and other nations negotiating trade deals with the administration. Televised hearings can put pressure on their colleagues on the other side of the aisle and the White House; once they’re back in power, Democrats should pursue criminal investigations. In just a few months, Trump’s second administration has struck numerous blows against the rule of law and accountability. Should Democrats regain some measure of political power, they need to be ready to exercise it in the interests of the American people, ensuring that rule breaking and illegal acts are kept in check — and not allowing prior lawlessness to go unpunished. Musk is an easy, and worthy, target to start with. Democrats should use his record as a springboard to regain power and, once they have it, to put the rich and powerful on notice that this time the party intends to serve the public.
Eoin Higgins
Eoin Higgins is a writer based in New England. His book, "Owned: How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left," is available now. 
