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Since Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has officially gone into action, at least two million government employees have received an email from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management with the subject: “Fork in the Road.” 

This subject line mirrors the one sent to Twitter employees after Musk’s takeover of Twitter, which he’s since renamed X. However, in the government version of the email, employees received a buyout option where they could choose to resign with pay until September. 

Legal scrutiny already threatens to topple this move, with a judge forcing the Trump administration to give employees longer than the original nine-day-decision deadline while the court hears arguments. 

One legal group, Democracy Forward, has plainly called the office’s move illegal, claiming that the OPM does not have the authority to make this offer.  

The “Fork in the Road” emails almost feel like a needle in a haystack when considered next to the cascade of changes initiated by Musk’s task force. 

Some other highlights from DOGE’s first weeks include effectively shutting down USAID, accessing Treasury payment systems, and feeding sensitive government data into an AI model to scan for potential cuts. 

It would be impossible for me to fully outline every single action undertaken by Elon Musk’s DOGE, and at this point, I have a feeling that the information I have already outlined will at least be slightly outdated by the time of publication, simply due to the sheer speed DOGE is moving at. 

In a recent essay, Ezra Klein quoted Steve Bannon, a short-lived first-term Trump advisor and media strategist, as saying that the Republican strategy should be emulating “muzzle velocity,” in other words, moving so fast and doing so many things at once that the opposition cannot keep up. 

It is also important to note that the media is the opposition Bannon refers to here.

For me, it is almost impossible not to see the parallels in between this thinking and DOGE’s strategy. 

Silicon Valley Strategy

For Musk, the DOGE strategy also aligns with Silicon Valley thought, i.e., “move fast and break things.” 

And Musk certainly breaks things. When he took over Twitter and laid off thousands of employees, the site saw major outages and bugs. 

I fear this is what’s happening to important federal offices, like the Department of Education, which DOGE has announced it is canceling $881 million worth of contracts. 

Other DOGE takeover and Twitter buyout similarities include Musk sleeping in office buildings and refusing to pay rent.

In my opinion, this Silicon Valley styled chaos really seems like a coup, especially considering the very basic fact that Congress is meant to control the purse strings when it comes to the federal government.

Of course, the Trump administration has an alternative idea about how much power the president actually wields, believing in the “unitary executive.” The unitary executive theory posits that “the Constitution gives the president sole control over the executive branch of government.”

UNF Student Opinions

Some UNF students I spoke to were more hesitant to label Musk’s actions through DOGE a coup. 

Lloyd Hoover, a first-year environmental science student, indicated that they understood the reasoning behind labeling Musk’s actions as a coup, but seemed hesitant to use the label themself.

However, Hoover did add that they do not “think he should be anywhere near the Treasury,” citing Musk’s Twitter buyout. 

Other students spoke more plainly about DOGE’s attack on the government.

Celah Teschner, a senior in the English program, said, “Elon Musk is contributing to an oligarchy in the United States.”

Pushing Back

Yes, when moving at muzzle velocity and breaking things, it is incredibly difficult for your opposition—whoever that may be—to keep up. However, this strategy also relies on your opposition tiring out before you do. 

Even if some do not want to call DOGE and the Trump administration’s actions a coup, I have seen widespread pushback and legal challenges. 

Holding out as long as possible and pushing back as much as possible are key to ensuring the DOGE coup ends.

The real question is: Can pushback against DOGE win out before the government crumbles to pieces?

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