Corporate Governance Archives

Elon Musk, President Donald Trump and their cronies are at the heart of what ails us, says Candice Helfand-Rogers. (Credit: Department Of Government Efficiency X account) Over the weekend, a report from Wired revealed that the team leading Elon Musk’s takeover of our government – and of our sensitive personal data – is just six members strong. None of the men – boys, really – who make up the so-called Department of Government Efficiency Task Force are old enough to rent cars. Several are too young to even drink alcohol. But all the same, they now have control of the Office of Personnel Management, the General Services Administration, and the Treasury Department’s payment system. It’s shady, careless, power-grabbing work on the part of incompetent individuals, Musk chief among them, who are moving without accountability, and with only their own best interests in mind. “What we're seeing is unprecedented in that you have these actors who are not really public officials gaining access to the most sensitive data in government,” Don Moynihan, a public policy professor at the University of Michigan, told Wired. “We really have very little eyes on what's going on. Congress has no ability to really intervene and monitor what's happening, because these aren't really accountable public officials.” He continued: “This feels like a hostile takeover of the machinery of governments by the richest man in the world.” The lawsuits blocking said takeover have already been filed, but … President Donald Trump’s long-ago promise to hire the “best people” continues to function solely as a mirthless joke. This news comes as we continue to reel in the wake of several horrific aviation accidents – the biggest among them involving a collision between a commercial airline flight and an Army Black Hawk helicopter over Washington, D.C. airspace. Now, experts have cautioned against making logical leaps about causes, even including the potential relationship between these recent accidents and Trump’s gutting of the Federal Aviation Administration, or his hiring freeze on air traffic controllers. Jim Cardoso, senior director of the University of South Florida’s Global and National Security Institute, told PBS that “the actions by President Trump would not have led to such an immediate impact.” This call for patience and reticence hasn’t stopped Trump and his supporters from formulating noxious theories of their own, however. Even before the identities of the pilots were released, conservatives were blaming “DEI” efforts – short for diversity, equity and inclusion programs – for the crash. We’re not just talking about random internet bums or conservative sycophants in Congress, either – Trump himself was touting this theory in a press conference the day after the crash, seemingly blaming DEI hiring practices for the tragedy. And when it was revealed that one of the Black Hawk pilots was a woman, Rebecca Lobach, the swamp that is the online manosphere exploded, crowing about how “feminism is the original DEI, and it destroyed this country.” In addition to gutting and shuttering DEI programs throughout federal government – one of the new administration’s first acts – a ripple effect has been created. The still-majority-white-male owners of our biggest companies are now rolling back their own efforts, ones that had created pipelines for marginalized individuals routinely excluded from higher tiers of corporate life. But here’s the thing: Studies show that companies who did implement such measures benefited from them. Higher profits, increased innovation, boosts in employee morale. In particular, having more women in charge yields better results for the companies that don’t exclude them. Try telling that to the DOGE Task Force, though. No really – tell them. Tell everyone, in fact. Part of dissenting amid a hostile takeover involves naming things for what they are, and not ceding ground on objective truths. The Earth is not flat, to name one example. Trump is a convicted felon and rapist, to name another. And diversity has been proven to make us better, and stronger, while these unqualified-yet-power-hungry men are making us worse. Weaker. Significantly more vulnerable, in all the worst ways. Trump, Musk and their ilk have already taken control of so much, including sensitive parts of our official identities – we cannot let them take control of the narrative, too. ◼️

Corporate Governance

‘DEI’ is Not to Blame for What Ails Us – Dumb, Arrogant Men Are

World’s Largest Investor Demands More Women on Company Boards

Women CFOs Are On the Rise, Research Shows

The Fortune 500 List Just Dropped – and There’s a Record Number of Women CEOs

The Especially Thick Glass Ceiling of the Tech World

Mandated Equality?

Researchers Find That Women Keep Executive Boards Honest

The Story Exchange

Corporate Governance

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