Trump announces Musk will lead new Department of Government Efficiency
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President-elect Trump announced on Tuesday that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will lead a new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to cut government spending and streamline bureaucracy.
Why it matters: The Musk-Trump political alliance is moving from the campaign into the White House. However, it's unclear what exactly Musk's role will entail — or whether he and Ramaswamy will actually be able to make the kinds of sweeping changes they have proposed.
- Trump described the new "department" as "potentially, 'The Manhattan Project' of our time," but he also said it would be advising from "outside of government."
- That suggests Musk and Ramaswamy, a wealthy investor and biotech entrepreneur, won't have any power to implement changes, only to advise the White House and executive branch departments on cuts.
- Musk already has multiple companies to run — one of which, SpaceX, has massive government contracts — so it's unclear what his day-to-day involvement will be. Conflict of interest concerns are also likely.
Between the lines: Cutting billions in government spending is easy to promise but hard to deliver.
- Many Trump partisans in tech see Musk's takeover and transformation of Twitter into X as a model for how to go about reshaping the federal government, but they're likely to be disappointed, Axios' Scott Rosenberg writes.
- The department's acronym is an homage to a Musk-friendly cryptocurrency.
Flashback: Ramaswamy proposed slashing one million government jobs — including all of the FBI — while challenging Trump for the GOP nomination last year.
What they're saying: Musk said in a statement that his new project "will send shockwaves through the system, and anyone involved in Government waste, which is a lot of people!"
- He tweeted that the department's merch would be fire.
- Musk said on X later Tuesday that all of the department's actions would be posted online "for maximum transparency" and urged people to let him know if they are "cutting something important" or not cutting something that's wasteful.
- "We will also have a leaderboard for most insanely dumb spending of your tax dollars," he added. "This will be both extremely tragic and extremely entertaining 🤣🤣"
Go deeper: Elon Musk is coming to Washington
Editor's note: This article has been updated with new details throughout.
