Rep. Summer Lee informed her constituents on the evening of February 20 that Elon Musk has been behaving like an unelected “prime minister” and vowed to oppose any potential cuts to social programs and education through his Department of Government Efficiency.
“[Musk] essentially bought his way, not just into [Trump’s] inner circle, beyond it, right into the Oval Office,” Lee says. “He is essentially working as if he is the prime minister of the United States, which tracks, as Donald Trump is now proclaiming he is the king.”
Rep. Summer Lee’s team hosted a one-hour “Tele-Town Hall” on Feb. 20, allowing constituents to call in, listen, and submit questions. The event was also streamed live on Facebook, with around 100 viewers tuning in at any given time. Lee, a progressive representing Pittsburgh and parts of the South Hills and Mon Valley, fielded questions from concerned residents in Monroeville, Bloomfield, and Bethel Park.
During the broadcast, a member of Lee’s team read questions regarding the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a non-government entity created by President Donald Trump and overseen by Elon Musk. Musk, who has publicly declared his admiration for Trump and spent hundreds of millions to support his re-election, plays a central role in the initiative. Earlier this month, Lee and other members of Congress’s Oversight and Government Reform Committee attempted—but failed—to subpoena Musk.
According to Trump and Musk, DOGE is designed to review federal spending and implement adjustments. However, critics warn that these “adjustments” could lead to deep cuts in essential programs like Medicaid and Social Security, as well as sweeping layoffs of federal workers, potentially weakening the government’s overall function.
One of the most striking developments attributed to Musk’s influence is Trump’s effective shutdown of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which accounts for less than 1% of the federal budget and provides humanitarian aid worldwide. Additionally, DOGE’s efforts to obtain vast amounts of private citizen data from the federal government have sparked significant public backlash and legal challenges.
During the town hall, Lee remarked that the first month of Trump’s second term has felt like an entire year, using strong language to characterize what she sees as his administration’s governing style.
“I don’t believe that we can afford to mince many words,” Lee says. “President Trump is conducting an illegal and dangerous power grab, to call it what it is. Elon Musk is stealing from you, the American people, your jobs, your benefits, your data.” Later in the town hall, Lee added that it wasn’t “catastrophizing” to describe the United States as being in a “constitutional crisis.”
Addressing Trump’s proposal to abolish the Department of Education, Rep. Lee stated that it would be illegal for him to unilaterally dissolve the department.
“And that’s just wrong,” Lee says. “The Department of Education is there to ensure that all kids, all students, irrespective of their ZIP Code or their background, have access to a quality of education … it provides essential federal funding supporting our local school districts.”
She continued: “We have to speak out against dark money in politics … we shouldn’t accept it in any race because we know that it leads to this,” Lee says. “And we have to get back into the fight on messaging grounds. There are people who voted for Donald Trump, who voted for Kamala Harris or people who didn’t vote at all, who didn’t want this to happen. Who didn’t want the few, oligarchs, to run our country. And we have an obligation of helping them to understand what’s really happening.”
