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During his most recent presidential campaign, Donald Trump promised to “put unelected bureaucrats back in their place.” Apparently, that place is in the federal government, doing what they want with little accountability.

The most powerful unelected bureaucrat in the United States today—and perhaps ever—is Elon Musk. The social-media troll and tech mogul is currently a “special government employee” leading something called the Department of Government Efficiency, though it is neither a department nor, as far as can be ascertained, all that interested in improving efficiency. DOGE’s clearest goal seems to be getting rid of as many civil servants as possible, by whatever means possible—including cajoling, buyouts, and firings, some of which have drawn reproach from courts.

The assault on government workers has been a long time coming. In 2017, during his first term, Trump began referring to federal employees as the “deep state,” and he often accused them of undermining him or slow-walking his ideas. It didn’t help that he often asked for impossible or illegal things, though the most prominent examples of defiance came from Cabinet-level, Senate-confirmed officials whom Trump himself had appointed. While campaigning as a quasi-populist, Trump railed against unelected officials who he argued treated ordinary citizens with disdain, assuming they knew best, or who were deeply enmeshed in conflicts of interest and lining their own pockets. Trump and his allies repeatedly suggested that Joe Biden’s aides were running the government because the president was too checked out to manage.

Now an unelected aide, beset with conflicts of interest, seems to be effectively running the government. He’s barreling through carefully constructed guardrails, acting as though he knows better than anyone else how the government ought to run, while a passive president looks on. No one’s pretending that Trump is particularly interested in the software systems of the government, and he’s made clear that he’s pretty detached from it all. “Sometimes we won’t agree with it, and we’ll not go where he wants to go,” he said of Musk’s role recently. In short, Trump has set a broad direction and tasked Musk with executing the details. That’s what bureaucrats do.

Because this is exactly what Trump campaigned against, justifying it is challenging, though apologists like Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk are game to try. “The American people quite literally voted for Elon Musk and DOGE when they elected Donald Trump with a historic mandate,” Kirk posted on X. But that’s absurd. Trump said on the trail that Musk would help him, but he didn’t outline this. The DOGE idea wasn’t formally announced until after the election, and Trump didn’t run on dismantling USAID or selling off half the government’s real-estate portfolio. Musk wasn’t elected, hasn’t been vetted or confirmed by the Senate, and didn’t even have to go through the standard hiring process. This is probably just as well; his admitted use of controlled substances might pose some challenges. He will reportedly not release a financial disclosure, and the White House says he’ll police his own conflicts of interest. Unfortunately, he has a long track record of questionable ethical decisions.

Democrats, otherwise reeling in the first weeks of the Trump administration, have picked up on the fact that Musk may be a useful target. Although most Democratic attacks on Trump’s populist persona have fallen short, this one seems more promising. Firing thousands of federal workers for nothing more than doing their job, while clinging to a self-described racist and a teenager nicknamed “Big Balls,” may not go over well with voters who just wanted inflation fixed. Representative Jared Golden, a Democrat from a red district in Maine, reported that he was getting a flood of constituent calls about Musk.

Focusing on Musk’s outrageous abuse of power may not be as effective as Democrats hope. Musk obviously hates many of the same people whom Trump’s fans hate, and that’s a powerful bonding force. What sinks Musk may ultimately be not populist resentment but court rulings against him, Trump’s need to remain the center of attention, or backlash when the cuts he’s pursuing start affecting voters’ lives directly.

“An unelected shadow government is conducting a hostile takeover of the federal government,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer posted on X last week. “Congress must take action to restore the rule of law.” (If only Schumer knew anyone in Congress!) Musk quickly replied: “This is the one shot the American people have to defeat BUREAUcracy, rule of the bureaucrats, and restore DEMOcracy, rule of the people. We’re never going to get another chance like this. It’s now or never. Your support is crucial to the success of the revolution of the people.”

The most striking thing about this response—other than the world’s richest man adopting Leninist rhetoric about “the revolution of the people”—is its reversal of reality. Schumer won an election; Musk is just a bureaucrat.

Related:

Elon Musk is president. Elon Musk’s bureaucratic coup is under way.

Here are four new stories from The Atlantic:

Is this what cancel culture achieved? Trump says the corrupt part out loud. DOGE is failing on its own terms. What happens when bird flu gets worse?

Today’s News

Trump hosted Jordanian King Abdullah II at the White House, where they discussed the president’s plan to relocate Palestinians from Gaza to Jordan and Egypt. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the Gaza cease-fire would end if Hamas did not go through with the hostage release scheduled for Saturday. The Justice Department ordered federal prosecutors yesterday to withdraw the corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams.

Evening Read

Illustration by Matteo Giuseppe Pani / The Atlantic

What an ‘America First’ Diet Would Really Look Like

By Yasmin Tayag

Trump’s stance on agriculture is the same as his stance on everything else: “America First.”

The notion that the country could produce all of its food domestically is nice—even admirable. An America First food system would promote eating seasonally and locally, supporting more small farmers in the process. But that is not how most people eat now.

Read the full article.

More From The Atlantic

The cruel attack on USAID Good on Paper: The great political sort is happening at the office. Blame Gerald Ford for Trump’s unaccountability. It’s time to worry about DOGE’s AI plans.

Culture Break

Illustration by Panayiotis Terzis

Read. Mood Machine will make you marvel at how much effort Spotify puts into recommending a song that sounds like a different song you liked three months ago, Brad Shoup writes.

Ponder. “Should I leave my American partner?” one reader asks James Parker in the latest edition of “Dear James.” “I love him, but I don’t know if I can live in the U.S. forever.”

Play our daily crossword.

P.S.

To me, Kendrick Lamar’s use of American-flag and Uncle Sam imagery at Sunday’s Super Bowl was fairly clearly political—and subversive. What it was not, however, was blunt. Perhaps the overly literal protest gestures of the first Trump administration have somewhat numbed viewers to anything more subtle. Regardless, I was amused and perplexed to see some commentators taking the flag’s presence as a signal of alignment with the president. “When backup dancers dressed in red, white, and blue formed the American flag, it felt more patriotic than political,” wrote The Free Press’s River Page, as though patriotism can ever be apolitical.

All of this reminded me of George Will’s review of a 1984 Bruce Springsteen show. “For the initiated, which included most of the 20,000 the night I experienced him, the lyrics, believe it or not, are most important,” Will observed. But apparently the famously erudite columnist’s insights failed him, as he badly misunderstood one of the sharpest critiques (and critics) of the Reagan era. “I have not got a clue about Springsteen’s politics, if any, but flags get waved at his concerts while he sings songs about hard times. He is no whiner, and the recitation of closed factories and other problems always seems punctuated by a grand, cheerful affirmation: ‘Born in the U.S.A.!’” So close, and yet so far.

— David

Stephanie Bai contributed to this newsletter.

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Editor’s Note: Is anything ailing, torturing, or nagging at you? Are you beset by existential worries? Every Tuesday, James Parker tackles readers’ questions. Tell him about your lifelong or in-the-moment problems at dearjames@theatlantic.com.

Don’t want to miss a single column? Sign up to get “Dear James” in your inbox.

Dear James,

I’m 27 years old, I live in New York, and I’m in a healthy, loving relationship with a guy I met here. He’s caring and hardworking, and my family and friends love him for me. The problem is, I don’t know if I want to live in the United States long term. I’m from abroad—a country far enough away that my partner has never been—and I moved to the U.S. on a temporary work visa. As my relationship becomes more serious, I grapple with the thought of having to be here forever.

I never grew up thinking I’d migrate anywhere permanently. I’m very close to my family back home, and I have a comfortable, if not cushy, life there. In the U.S., I deal with the social, political, cultural, and legal hurdles of being a foreigner in a place where the current climate isn’t always the most friendly. I don’t have the financial or personal freedoms I would like. I deal with racists. I get homesick.

My partner loves his job, it pays extremely well, and it legally ties him to working within the United States. Basically, he could never move for me. But when I think about committing to him, I can’t help mourning everything I imagine I’d be giving up. Maybe I’m just being young and foolish and don’t realize that my problems are a speck in the grand scheme of things. I don’t know. Perhaps you can tell me?

Dear Reader,

As an expat, self-transplanted from England to be in America with my American wife, I feel you. This is a beautiful, crazy, wide-as-you-like country, merciless in some ways, impossibly generous in others, and for better or worse I became myself here. That’s one of the things America can do. No gains without losses, though, and I feel the pull of home too: all the occasions missed, the conversations that never happened, the hangs unhung … It’s sort of a shadow on me, my life’s dark side of the moon.

But let me ask you this: Are you thrilled to be with this guy? I mean thrilled to bits, thrilling to his touch, all of that? You say he’s caring, hardworking, your family loves him—all good stuff. Great stuff. And I don’t want to do him an injustice. But somewhere, at some level, in some layer of your being, you’ve got to be thrilled. I think perhaps if you were thrilled, you wouldn’t be asking yourself these questions.

I could be wrong, though, and the two of you might have a scorching and vibrant thing that you have modestly under-described in your letter. Whatever the case, here’s my advice: Don’t leave. America is a challenge. America is an invitation. America puts you on your mettle. Especially right now, in (to use your phrase) the “current climate” of the United States: America needs you!

Reading the news and listening to Bad Brains,

James

By submitting a letter, you are agreeing to let The Atlantic use it in part or in full, and we may edit it for length and/or clarity.

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.

Every year, Super Bowl advertisers pay millions to appear on screens for a minute or less. The ad slots tend more toward the upbeat than the controversial. But even by the low bar of Super Bowl advertising, this year was rather risk-averse. Sweet animals and mascots abounded. Multiple ads featured vaguely old-timey montages. At a certain point, the commercials started to blend together. (The two different ads featuring flying hair certainly did.)

In past big games, some companies have attempted to speak to the zeitgeist by addressing civic or political themes in their ads. In 2017, just after Donald Trump was inaugurated for the first time, some major Super Bowl advertisers addressed politics head-on: Budweiser released an ad portraying the founder of the company encountering discrimination as he immigrated to America. Airbnb’s spot that year seemingly criticized Trump’s then–travel ban.

In the past decade or so, in particular, some brands have embraced explicitly political marketing, giving credence to the idea that consumers “vote with their wallets.” Some shoppers have said that they do: A 2018 survey from the communications firm Edelman found that nearly 60 percent of American consumers would buy or boycott a brand “solely because of its position on a social or political issue,” up 12 points from the year before. Following the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020 and the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022, many consumers (and employees) demanded that major corporations, even those whose businesses didn’t directly relate to social issues, take a stand on topics such as race, voting rights, and abortion—even if some suspected that companies were responding to pressure rather than acting on genuine principle.

This year’s Super Bowl advertisers showed little interest in going near any of that. Few made explicit reference to politics (excepting nonprofits). Timothy Calkins, a marketing professor at Northwestern, told me that he sees the 2023 Bud Light imbroglio, in which the company faced massive backlash over partnering with the transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney in a social-media video, as a shift. By 2023, Americans had started to soften on their interest in companies taking a stand on social issues, according to Gallup. Flickers of a move away from political ads were apparent last year; during both the 2023 and the 2024 games, Budweiser made a nostalgia play, focusing its ads on the brand’s classic Clydesdale horses.

The NFL, for its part, decided this year to remove the message “End Racism,” which had been stenciled onto the edge of the end zone for the past four Super Bowls, and replace it with “Choose Love.” Donald Trump attended the game, the first sitting president to do so; the league has denied that the timing of the change was related to the president’s attendance.

Super Bowl ad space was available for purchase well before the presidential election: Skechers, back in May, became the first brand to confirm that it had bought a national spot. By mid-2024, about 85 percent of the ad units were sold out, and by early November, all of the slots had sold. A bit of reshuffling followed—State Farm pulled its ad after the Los Angeles–area fires—but for the most part, companies have been prepping for many months. Still, Calkins told me, every advertiser likely took a closer look at their cuts after the election, to make sure that nothing would spark too much controversy, given the new administration.

Super Bowl ads cost so much—more than $8 million this year for some national slots, nearly double what they cost a decade ago—and a misstep can pose a dire risk for companies. But many still find the huge audience, a rarity in our fractured media environment, worth the potential treachery, Calkins told me. The challenge for brands going forward, he said, is to find the balance of being “safe” without losing creativity. This year, lots of ads were uncontroversial—and uninspired. Maybe next year, more of them will surprise us.

Related:

What the Hims Super Bowl ad is really selling What was that Super Bowl ad even selling?

Here are four new stories from The Atlantic:

How progressives froze the American dream Trump signals he might ignore the courts. A new kind of crisis for American universities The Christian mandate is more arduous than J. D. Vance allows.

Today’s News

Hamas alleged that Israel broke the cease-fire deal and has indefinitely postponed the hostage release scheduled for this Saturday. A federal judge ruled that the Trump administration had failed to comply with his court order to restore federal funding after the recent freeze. President Donald Trump announced 25 percent tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports.

Dispatches

Work in Progress: Tom Brady could be worth $375 million in the booth, Derek Thompson writes. The Wonder Reader: Isabel Fattal rounds up essays in which Atlantic writers travel near and far to find what’s missing.

Explore all of our newsletters here.

More From The Atlantic

A Super Bowl spectacle over the Gulf Why is the Trump administration deleting a paper on suicide risk? Trump’s conquest of the Kennedy Center is accelerating. The new authoritarianism

Evening Read

Patrick Smith / Getty

What Kendrick Lamar’s Halftime Show Said

By Spencer Kornhaber

The Super Bowl halftime show is an opportunity for big, dumb fun: explosions, laser shows, left sharks. But big, dumb fun isn’t Kendrick Lamar’s thing. The 37-year-old Los Angeles rapper and Pulitzer Prize winner prefers subtlety, smarts, and fun that’s tinged with danger and unease. Amid tough, tense circumstances, he put on a tough, tense—and quite satisfying—show.

Read the full article.

Culture Break

Photo-illustration by The Atlantic. Source: Getty.

Laugh (or don’t). A new biography of the Saturday Night Live creator Lorne Michaels profiles the unfunny man who became the arbiter of funny, James Parker writes.

Read. The Finnish writer Tove Jansson was the outsider who captured American loneliness, Lauren LeBlanc writes.

Play our daily crossword.

Stephanie Bai contributed to this newsletter.

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