Elon Musk will have a place in the second Trump administration.
The SpaceX founder and CEO will lead the new "Department of Government Efficiency" along with entrepreneur and politician Vivek Ramaswamy, President-elect Donald Trump announced on Tuesday evening (Nov. 12).
"Together, these two wonderful Americans will pave the way for my Administration to dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures and restructure Federal Agencies — Essential to the Save America Movement," Trump wrote in a statement on Tuesday (capitalization his).
"It will become, potentially, 'The Manhattan Project' of our time," Trump added. "Republican politicians have dreamed about the objectives of 'DOGE' for a very long time. To drive this kind of drastic change, the Department of Government Efficiency will provide advice and guidance from outside of Government, and will partner with the White House and Office of Management & Budget to drive large scale structural reform, and create an entrepreneurial approach to Government never seen before."
Related: What a 2nd Trump administration could mean for NASA and space exploration
According to Trump, Elon Musk and Ramaswamy will wrap up their work no later than July 4, 2026 — the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
The creation of DOGE does not come as a huge surprise. Musk, who campaigned for Trump and put more than $100 million of his own money into a pro-Trump political action committee, mentioned the idea — and his potential involvement in it — repeatedly on X in the weeks leading up to the election. (Musk bought X, then known as Twitter, in 2022 for $44 billion.)
And the new department's name seems to be a nod to dogecoin, Musk's favorite cryptocurrency.
Musk voiced new enthusiasm for DOGE after Trump's announcement on Tuesday evening, posting about it repeatedly on X.
"All actions of the Department of Government Efficiency will be posted online for maximum transparency. Anytime the public thinks we are cutting something important or not cutting something wasteful, just let us know! We will also have a leaderboard for most insanely dumb spending of your tax dollars. This will be both extremely tragic and extremely entertaining," he wrote in one Tuesday post.
"Either we get government efficient or America goes bankrupt. That's what it comes down to. Wish I were wrong, but it’s true," another Tuesday post reads.
Musk's involvement in the Trump administration is likely to draw conflict-of-interest criticism, given that the billionaire's various businesses could stand to benefit from the decisions that he helps make.
"His electric car company Tesla gets government funding and has received millions to install EV charging stations. His rocket company SpaceX has won billion-dollar government contracts for moon missions. And his satellite internet company, Starlink, has also gotten millions in subsidies from the federal government," NPR noted last week.
This is the second time that Musk has participated in a Trump presidency. The SpaceX founder and CEO served on three advisory councils during Trump's first term but resigned from them in 2017, after the president pulled the United States out of the Paris climate pact.
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