President-elect Donald Trump announced Tuesday that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will lead a new “Department of Government Efficiency” in his second administration.
“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,” Trump said in a statement.
The announcement of Ramaswamy and particularly Musk, who leads companies with existing, lucrative government contracts, raises immediate questions about potential conflicts of interest. It is not immediately clear how the department – which Trump said would “provide advice and guidance from outside of Government” – would operate, and whether a Congress even fully controlled by Republicans would have the appetite to approve such a massive overhaul of government spending and operations.
Trump’s statement Tuesday night quoted Musk as saying that “this will send shockwaves through the system, and anyone involved in Government waste, which is a lot of people!”
Ramaswamy separately responded on X with a slogan he often used during his presidential campaign to call for the elimination of federal agencies, writing: “SHUT IT DOWN.”
