He was one of the richest men of his time, a powerful force in business and then in government — so influential that political adversaries taunted the White House that he was “the real president.”

Today, that’s Elon Musk’s story, as the world’s richest man winds down his tumultuous time in Washington as a “special government employee” in President Donald Trump’s administration. But while Musk’s astronomical wealth and the work of his Department of Government Efficiency have been one of a kind, there are strong echoes of another businessman-turned-slasher-of-government who came to Washington just more than 100 years ago.

Andrew Mellon, a Pittsburgh banker and one of America’s wealthiest men in the early 20th century, was treasury secretary to three Republican presidents — Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover — for more than a decade in the 1920s and early 1930s.

Like Musk, Mellon came to Washington with the aim of drastically cutting back federal spending. Like Musk, he remained involved in his private businesses at the same time, as biographer David Cannadine has chronicled, sparking fierce protests from opposition Democrats. Like Musk, political opponents made him a national boogeyman and suggested that Mellon was the true power in Washington.

Three presidents served under him, the joke went. Sen. Robert La Follette Sr., a Wisconsin progressive, said Mellon was “the real president of the United States. Calvin Coolidge is merely the man who occupies the White House.”

And as Musk leaves the White House and appears to consider his political legacy, voicing concern that Trump and Republican lawmakers won’t follow through on his hopes of big spending cuts, Mellon’s own complicated legacy illustrates how difficult even titans of industry have found the task of permanently bending politics and government toward their will.

Mellon achieved his goals for a time, paring back yearly federal spending to approximately half the level it was before he took over the Treasury Department and reforming U.S. tax laws.

But the Great Depression turned the nation sharply against him and the Republican Party personified by wealthy businessmen, with Mellon becoming a political lightning rod in the way Musk has this year.

In “Mellon: An American Life,” Cannadine wrote that Mellon’s son recalled witnessing an early exercise in political social media targeting the treasury secretary: a rhyme written on a urinal at a rest stop between Pittsburgh and Washington.

“Mellon pulled the whistle, Hoover rang the bell,” it began, “Wall Street gave the signal, and the country went to hell.”

When Democrats took back Congress in the backlash after the Depression began, they investigated the intersection of Mellon businesses and government contracts they won while he was in the Cabinet, initiating impeachment proceedings before he resigned to take an ambassadorship.

And ultimately, Mellon saw his low-spending, laissez-faire ethos pushed aside in national politics by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal, which ushered in a wave of government spending and social programs that were anathema to Mellon-era Republicans.

No historical comparison lines up neatly in all respects. While Musk and Trump’s administration sought to slash programs through presidential orders and an expansive view of executive power, Mellon worked through Congress to enact his budgetary priorities.

Mellon was fabulously wealthy, thanks to investments in businesses from aluminum to oil to early airlines and beyond, but Musk’s businesses and riches are on a significantly different scale. And Mellon’s final work with the government, years later, was also of a decidedly nonpolitical nature: He established the National Gallery of Art, seeding it with his impressive private collection.

Musk’s story is far from its final chapter, with more twists and details to come even as he ends his stint at the White House. What we know for sure, though, is that wealth and power of that magnitude endure through the years.

In a twist of fate, after the Trump administration and DOGE slashed grants and staff this year, the Mellon Foundation, which was launched by Mellon’s children decades ago using part of the family fortune, stepped in to fill $15 million of the gap.

And there’s another eye-popping financial connection between the Mellon years and Musk’s time in government.

Musk was the biggest disclosed donor in the 2024 elections. The second-biggest? Timothy Mellon, Mellon’s grandson, who gave nearly $200 million in support of Trump, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and other causes, according to OpenSecrets — paving the way for Musk’s stint with DOGE in Washington.

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‘Impact on off-screen staff’

France’s National Assembly has voted to abolish low-emission zones, a key measure introduced during President Emmanuel Macron’s first term to reduce city pollution.

So-called ZFEs (zones à faibles émissions) have been criticised for hitting those who cannot afford less-polluting vehicles the hardest.

A handful of MPs from Macron’s party joined opposition parties from the right and far right in voting 98-51 to scrap the zones, which have gradually been extended across French cities since 2019.

The motion was put forward by Pierre Meurin of the far-right National Rally, and backed by some motoring organisations.

But it was a personal victory for writer Alexandre Jardin who set up a movement called Les #Gueux (Beggars), arguing that “ecology has turned into a sport for the rich”.

“Everyone played their part in the vote. The MPs voted either for the end of this nightmare, or they abstained,” he told Le Figaro newspaper.

“They were afraid of going back to their constituencies if they had voted against the abolition of the ZFEs.”

The low-emission zones began with 15 of France’s most polluted cities in 2019 and by the start of this year had been extended to every urban area with a population of more than 150,000, with a ban on cars registered before 1997.

Those produced after 1997 need a round “Crit’Air” sticker to drive in low-emission zones, and there are six categories that correspond to various types of vehicle.

The biggest restrictions have been applied in the most polluted cities, Paris and Lyon, as well as Montpellier and Grenoble.

They have turned into something of a lightning rod for Macron’s opponents.

Marine Le Pen condemned the ZFEs as “no-rights zones” during her presidential campaign for National Rally in 2022, and her Communist counterpart warned of a “social bomb”.

The head of the right-wing Republicans in the Assembly, Laurent Wauquiez, talked of “freeing the French from stifling, punitive ecology”, and on the far left, Clémence Guetté said green policies should not be imposed “on the backs of the working classes”.

The government tried to head off Wednesday night’s revolt by watering down the restrictions, but also preserving the zones in Paris and Lyon. This amendment was defeated by a large margin.

Agnès Pannier-Runacher, the minister for green transition, told MPs that “air pollution is behind almost 40,000 premature deaths a year… and the low-emission zones have helped bring down [that number]”.

The Greens and Socialists also voted to maintain the zones.

Green Senator Anne Souyris told BFMTV that “killing [the ZFEs] also means killing hundreds of thousands of people” and Socialist MP Gérard Leseul said the vote sent a negative signal as it did not address the reduction that had to be made to levels of air pollution.

The abolition is expected to go through the upper house, France’s Senate, but it still needs to be approved in a broader bill in the lower house in June and will have to be approved by France’s Constitutional Council, which is not guaranteed.