i feel that a lot of people are commenting without knowing a lot about the government. putting aside whether Trump is exceeding his statutory authority (he very well might be with this USAID stuff, he certainly has with his past XOs), you can have an executive branch position with access and managerial control without being confirmed. who confirms the White House Chief of Staff?
The default is that congress has to confirm _all officers_ in the executive branch, and it's only by delegation through law that you get other behavior. That's my understanding at least.
To my knowledge the Chief of Staff does not have the power to coerce other people to do things directly. Any "actual" coercion would have to go through someone like the President, right?
And my dumb thought is if DOGE is going around telling OMB and Treasury what to do (and seemingly is willing to call the US Marshalls on people who stand in their way) and the head of the OMB requires senate confirmation... well what are we doing here?
There's a bunch of nuance you can play at a micro level (for example, Musk messaging Trump to do a thing and Trump giving an OK), though in that case that's also newsworthy and important, because it properly associates who is responsible for what is going on!
Right now we have somebody who seems to be running rampant doing whatever he wants, and this lack of explicit association with the rest of the executive make it unclear who is actually calling the shots here. And if Trump isn't calling the shots... again, where's the confirmation?
the chief of staff clearly has managerial discretion over other executive staff? they also have top level security clearance and afaik none of that is in any law. ultimately all of these staff serve at the pleasure of the president.
The chief of staff can relay orders from the president to cabinet members and department heads, but cannot make decisions of this scope.
I don't really know how any of that is relevant, though. Musk is not Trump's chief of staff, and as far as we can tell, is not even employed by the federal government. He is not empowered to give (for example) orders to the head (confirmed or acting) of the OMB.
