Cartoon by Marian Kamensky

Musk and Ramaswamy race to build a ‘DOGE’ team for war with Washington

By Elizabeth Dwoskin, Jeff Stein, Jacob Bogage and Faiz Siddiqui

The Washington Post: Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are interviewing job candidates and seeking advice from experts in Washington and Silicon Valley — pushing a sweeping vision for the “Department of Government Efficiency” past the realm of memes and viral posts into potential real-world disruption.

Tapped by President-elect Donald Trump to lead an advisory panel to find “drastic” cuts to the federal government, the billionaire “DOGE” leaders have spent the past week in Washington and at Mar-a-Lago, seeking staff and interviewing seasoned Washington operators, legal specialists and top tech leaders, according to five people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to reflect private deliberations.

Both lobbied for Russell Vought, Trump’s pick to run the White House budget office, who is close with Ramaswamy, several people said. The men see Vought, who is enthusiastic about their arguments to rely on an expansive and boundary-pushing view of executive power to reform the government, as a key potential ally.

Top Musk surrogates from his business empire — including private equity executive Antonio Gracias and Boring Company President Steve Davis — are involved in planning, the people said, along with a coterie of Musk friends and Silicon Valley leaders, including Palantir co-founder and investor Joe Lonsdale, who funds a libertarian-leaning nonprofit dedicated to government efficiency; investor Marc Andreessen; hedge fund manager Bill Ackman; and former Uber chief executive Travis Kalanick. Ramaswamy, Musk and the Silicon Valley cohort plan to work on technical challenges to collecting data about federal employees and programs, which they believe is siloed in antiquated systems.

Andreessen is acting as a key networker for talent recruitment, one person said. Those executives did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Musk and Ramaswamy, a former GOP presidential candidate, outlined their vision for using executive powers and the legal system to push cuts to federal regulations, spending and personnel — a vision that they expect to be tested in court. The men also are launching a podcast, called “Dogecast.” And they backed a new House subcommittee aimed at supplementing their efforts in Congress, where some Republicans have enthusiastically welcomed their initiative.

“President Trump, Elon Musk, and Vivek Ramaswamy are at the forefront of a spending paradigm shift that is sidelining K Street and defense contractors, while empowering the average American,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), a longtime proponent of cutting government spending, told The Washington Post. “I look forward to relentlessly fighting alongside them to deliver.”

Despite the flurry of activity, the effort is regarded as far-fetched by many budget and legal experts who for decades have seen similar efforts founder. In the op-ed published Wednesday, Musk and Ramaswamy said they plan to have Trump rescind “thousands” of government regulations, gut the federal workforce and slash hundreds of billions of dollars in federal spending, with or without congressional consent. It remains unclear how much the DOGE panel will cost or what its source of funding will be.

Even if it falls short of its goals, budget experts say the effort could prove hugely disruptive to workers and businesses that rely on certainty in federal regulation and spending.

Still, every step faces legal and practical roadblocks. Richard J. Pierce, a George Washington University professor who specializes in administrative law, said the Wall Street Journal piece shows Musk and Ramaswamy are “utterly ignorant” of the realities of federal law, which mandates strict procedures for repealing existing regulations.

For example, Trump has said the panel’s work will be completed by July 4, 2026, but getting rid of a single federal rule typically requires two or three years of effort, Pierce said. That includes cumbersome cost-benefit analyses to provide a basis for contradicting prior agency work. Musk and Ramaswamy have said Trump could sign an executive order to stop enforcement of such rules, but that, too, probably would be defeated in the courts, Pierce said.

Musk and Ramaswamy are actively planning to face the obstacles, dividing them into three buckets — legal, technical and administrative — and interviewing candidates with expertise in each area, one of the people said.

The effort also remains clouded by a lack of clarity about its ambitions. During the campaign, Musk spoke of cutting spending by $2 trillion, but even Trump-aligned experts are unclear whether he means to cut that amount in a single year — a goal that would be virtually impossible without touching popular programs like Medicare and Social Security — or over a longer period. Last year, total federal spending amounted to nearly $7 trillion.

Even if the cuts took place over a decade, they would be difficult to reconcile with Trump’s campaign promises to protect Social Security and Medicare. Some people who have met with the DOGE team have returned from Mar-a-Lago unsure of the targets, according to two people briefed on the conversations.

“One person will say they want to do $2 trillion [in cuts] annually and immediately. One will say they want to do this as a more long-term thing,” said Adam Brandon, a senior adviser to advocacy group Independent Center and former leader of the conservative spending policy group FreedomWorks. “They don’t really know yet, it seems.”

In their op-ed, Musk and Ramaswamy cited recent Supreme Court rulings on federal regulations, saying the decisions could clear a path for their work. But Pierce said it would be shocking if the court fully backed their theories.

“There is nothing in the statute that comes anywhere close to authorizing what they want to do, and no permission in the Constitution,” Pierce said. “I can’t even imagine what the argument would be beyond, ‘Gee, there are a lot of regulations, and we want to get rid of them.’” >>>