When Elon Musk swept in to wreck our democracy last year, he brought with him his own private security detail. Rather than tell Musk’s rent-a-cop randos to get gone or assign Musk security from actual trained federal personnel, this administration took a more novel approach: Just have the U.S. Marshals deputize Musk’s security team as federal agents. Problem solved!
Sure, Musk’s security personnel didn’t meet the requirements to be deputized as federal law enforcement, but in our brave new world of meritocracy, lol, so what.
Now, by “didn’t meet the requirements,” we’re not talking about how there was some hypertechnical federal employment requirement that these otherwise exceedingly well-trained and well-qualified people lacked. No, we’re talking about people who never completed even a “basic law enforcement training program.” We’re talking about people who didn’t even have one year of experience in a law enforcement agency.
Pfft. Training requirements are for losers who lack the deep, merit-based vision of President Donald Trump and, of course, Musk as well. So, in February 2025, the White House demanded the U.S. Marshals deputize Musk’s mall cops, no matter how meager their qualifications.
Fun fact: This meant the mall cops could carry weapons in some federal buildings while protecting Musk. Terrific. Additional fun fact: The deputization apparently can last for two years, meaning it wouldn’t expire until February 2027.
No one knows if that means Musk’s armed goons still get to roam the halls of federal agencies. Did they all leave with Musk? Did some get peeled off to make sure that leftover DOGE babies like Big Balls stay safe?
Ostensibly, all of this was necessary because Musk said he had seen an uptick in death threats after he became the gleeful, stupid face of the administration’s project to rip out the writing and tear the government down to the studs. Setting aside the fact that this is a problem of Musk’s own creation, the government already had a solution for situations like this.
When Dr. Anthony Fauci began receiving death threats in 2020 at the start of the coronavirus pandemic, the U.S. Marshals deputized agents from the Health and Human Services Inspector General’s office to act as security. The key difference between this and Musk’s goons is that the HHS agents were already federal law enforcement personnel, employed directly by the government. Musk’s goons are not employed by the federal government and are not members of any law enforcement body anywhere.
As with so many other things in this administration, we only know about this thanks to litigation. Democracy Forward had to file suit to force the U.S. Marshals to follow the Freedom of Information Act and release the records about this.
We still don’t even know the actual qualifications of Musk’s armed goons, as the FOIA release blacked out all of that, a stark contrast to the info you get to learn about any actual federal law enforcement personnel.
Also as with so many other things in this administration, this shows how laughable any claims of being “merit-based” really are.
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Sure, this isn’t as risible as putting Erika Kirk on the Air Force Academy board or pushing through wildly unqualified Cabinet secretaries like Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth or Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, but it’s problematic nonetheless, ignoring actual safety requirements and qualifications just because Trump and Musk want it that way.
Think of Elon’s goons as a tiny, little internal ICE-type force, armed randos who haven’t received the amount of training the government requires for the authority they hold, exerting unchecked power, and the administration scrambling to hide it all.
It’s a basic, core tenet of American democracy that we get to know how our tax dollars are being spent, and that used to mean easily learning the name, work assignments, qualifications, disciplinary history, and pay of anyone who worked for the government. Now, it’s just a perpetual mystery, an ongoing struggle to learn anything. Most transparent administration in history, right?
