That's not how it works in the U.S. If an executive branch department was created by the legislature, it is up to the legislature whether or not it exists, not the executive. If the legislature has passed laws regarding how its resources are to be used, its employees treated, the executive is not free to disregard those laws.
The legislature is the source of laws in the U.S., not the executive. The irony is that the Republicans control the legislature as well. They could pass laws to achieve what Musk wants. It would be slow, but it would be legal.
A coup is seizing power outside the legal mechanism for doing so.
It's beyond me how so many of us think that continuously ignoring the will of the people is "OK". Either tell me my choice doesn't matter, or just shut up with the drama and enact safe and fair referendums on every single hot topic so we can all get to the right answer and then if we find we're in the minority, we'll shut up.
It should be clear as day to anyone that is unbiased that fixing the US/Mexican border was ridiculously easy (it's essentially been done in 2 weeks and they didn't even have to finish building their stupid wall). The only reason it didn't happen till now was precisely because the whole thing is broken and not really an expression of the peoples' will. It was rather an expression of an amalgamation of a giant mindless mass of bureaucrats, and you can't fix it unless you do what they are doing now. Not to single you out sorry, but opinions like yours ("we gotta do it the legal way and according to rules x, y, z, and 500 other rules") are precisely why nothing ever got done or fixed properly. And I say that as someone that is absolutely on board with following every rule to the T, with no exceptions.
Fixing the border happened 8 months ago. Nothing meaningful has changed at the border since June 2024. The only reason it took so long is that Biden wanted Congress to do it rather than using probably-illegal executive fiat powers, and eventually Biden got tired of waiting and did it anyway after Trump told Congress to axe the bipartisan border deal that bascially everybody but the extremists on either side was on board with.
You can make an argument that Biden should have done it by executive fiat even earlier, and that's your prerogative. But the fact of the matter is that even once a legislative fix was ready, Trump and the Republicans threw it away for no good reason, so that he could continue campaigning on immigration. That, by the way, is exactly "not an expression of the peoples' will". That's refusing to fix a problem for the sole purpose of campaigning on that problem.
Much of Trump's governance is like an episode of reality TV or WWE. Loud, flashy and mostly fake. Creating his own problems to "solve" by changing nothing. Threaten Canada and Mexico with tariffs then cancel them and declare victory when they say they'll do something they were already doing, e.g. Mexico deployed 10,000 Mexican troops to their border years ago under an agreement with Biden. Columbia accepted hundreds of deportation flights under Biden, then Trump tries to use military aircraft to do it and they say no, he makes threats then he declares massive victory when the arrangement reverts to exactly what was happening before.
That's a big lie. border encounters dropped 60-90% since 1/20. https://newsfactsnetwork.com/fact-check/fact-vs-fiction-did-...
Data obtained by fox news suggested that migrant arrivals at the southern border declined by 60% in the first week of Trump’s presidency compared to the last week of Biden’s administration. However, this figure differs from Trump’s 93% claim.
That's why I said 60-90%
https://www.cbp.gov/document/stats/southwest-land-border-enc...
And I don't know how you claim such things:
Trump 2019: 977,509
Trump 2020: 458,088 (46.86% from previous year)
Biden 2021: 1,734,686 (378.68% from previous year)
Biden 2022: 2,378,944 (137.14% from previous year)
Biden 2023: 2,475,669 (104.07% from previous year)
Biden 2024: 2,135,005 (86.24% from previous year)
I couldn't find older that 2019, but it's clear that in trumps last year, it more than halfed from his previous year. Then it more than tripled in the first year under Biden. Then almost doubled again in the subsequent year under Biden, and then grew a bit in 2023. Then only in 2024, did it reduce by a tiny 14%. Notably a 14% of what is effectively a number 5 times higher than what Trump got it down to before he left office.
And yeah you could argue (like some of the journalist did) that "oh this is just because Trump created a backlog". Well that's what people wanted, and it stopped the flow of people over the border. That's solving the problem, and really just shows that Biden literally just opened the doors, let it grow huge, and then "claimed success" when it started going back down to it's pre-Trump average. This is why we can't discuss this, we have so many supposedly "smart" people arguing and using the supposed "data" to twist the truth, and then dismissing what every can see plain as day (and is in this case supported by the data).
Oh and let's also not mention that it surged quite a bit in the last few months of 2024 when people I would assume started to flood the border in anticipation of Trump's arrival. So all that supposed work the Biden team did somehow didn't apply then? Of course, because they did nothing and the numbers reflect the fact that the border just lets them go through.