Musk's Private Guards Get Federal Powers: What History Tells Us This Means

The Blurring Line Between Private and Public Force in America

In Washington, a curious scene unfolds: private security forces, newly empowered with federal badges, move through the corridors of power. They belong not to the state but to Elon Musk, the World’s Richest Man, now running Trump's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

CNN reports the U.S. Marshals Service has just granted them official powers, marking a subtle but significant shift in how force is wielded in American democracy.

History teaches us to pay attention to such shifts. In the early 1930s, as Germany's democracy began to crumble, one of the first signs was the integration of private partisan forces into official police structures. Within weeks of Hitler's appointment as Chancellor in 1933, Hermann Göring had authorized 50,000 "auxiliary police" drawn from Nazi party organizations. At the time, the move seemed bureaucratic, technical–a matter of improving security coordination. Yet it marked the beginning of something far more sinister: the transformation of law enforceme…