“If this isn't a constitutional crisis, I'm not sure what is,” said Donald Moynihan, public policy professor at the University of Michigan. This comment follows recent actions taken by the new DOGE leader, Elon Musk, of infiltrating various government IT systems and dismantling the civil service workforce of many federal agencies. Speaking with NextGov, Moynihan added. “This is a test of how much power we think the president has and whether that power goes beyond what the Constitution and the law says... You have people within government — civil servants — who are now increasingly threatened for just raising basic issues of law and then being punished for that, while you have actors who are coming into government, in some cases teenagers, and engaging in dramatic abuses of federal power.”
