When Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy Come Together to Restruct the Government: The Case against Ruling Down the U.S.

Until he dropped out of the 2024 presidential race in January to endorse Trump, Ramaswamy vowed to reduce the role of the federal government. He wants to slash the Federal Reserve workforce by at least 90 percent and deporting American-born children of illegal immigrants.

He has cut spending in his businesses. He dramatically decreased the size of the company from 8,000 to 1,500 workers after buying X.

During a campaign rally in New York City ahead of Election day, Musk stated the budget for the federal government could be slashed by $2 trillion.

That said, Trump’s appreciation was public. After Musk’s endorsement, he decided to change his mind about electric vehicles, and he said he ” had no choice” but to support them. Trump also called Musk a “super genius” in his victory speech and included Musk in a family photo after the election.

Musk, the richest man in the world and the owner of electric cars, drones and a social media platform called X, was mentioned on the campaign trail by Trump as being in need of a federal government role.

While most department heads have to be confirmed by the Senate, it’s unclear what formalities Musk and Ramaswamy will have to go through for these roles.

“We will not go gently,” Ramaswamy said in a post on X in response to the news while tagging Musk, who commented separately in Trump’s original announcement.

After it was reported that he was once considered for vice president, the appointment of Ramaswamy brings him into Trump’s administration.

He’s tapped two billionaires, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, to help him “dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure federal agencies” through a commission Trump is calling the “Department of Government Efficiency”.

Doing Government Efficiency: The First Two Years of Donald Trump’s First Presidency and the Effects on Civil Service Reform in the U.S.

While it is not yet clear whether this entity will exist within the federal government or outside, an official government agency cannot be created without an act of Congress.

In a statement released Tuesday, Trump referred to the new agency as the “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE,) an acronym that is an apparent wink to the dog-themed cryptocurrency by the same name that started as a joke and skyrocketed after Musk promoted it.

“People are apprehensive and fearful,” says Nicole Cantello, an attorney with the Environmental Protection Agency who now serves as a union president representing EPA workers in the Upper Midwest.

Roughly 2 million civilians work for the federal government. All over the country, they protect national security and public health. They make sure food is safe and veterans are taken care of.

During his first term, Trump created a new category of appointees known as Schedule F, which he hoped to use to fire civil servants and replace them with loyalists.

Donald Kettl is a professor at the University of Maryland school of public policy and believes it will be in the next Trump administration.

“This is something that they plan on doing — and plan on doing in relatively short order — because they see Schedule F… as a good idea that they waited too late to launch,” says Kettl, who cofounded a working group focused on protecting and reforming the civil service.

The OPM issued a rule to make it harder to convert federal employees into political appointees who can be fired at will.

The first presidency of Trump was difficult for some federal workers, even without a commission that tried to slash regulations and jobs.

She describes changes that hampered their work. For example, lawyers could no longer directly ask companies about the pollutants they were discharging. Such information requests had to go through headquarters instead of being issued by the regional offices.

“When you put an additional bureaucratic roadblock in, and you have to submit something like that to headquarters, they can sit on it for a really long time,” she says. “And then you’re not enforcing the law.”

The EPA’s Regional Office: Implications for the American Accountability Foundation, and the Federal Employees’ Concern and Furry about the ‘Trump’

Trump also tried to move the EPA’s regional office overseeing the Great Lakes from Chicago to Kansas City, hundreds of miles from any of the lakes. The idea was dropped because of a protest from members of Congress.

She says that a lot of them put in four years. “And they’re just going to decline to do so this time around because it took so much out of them.”

A conservative group called the American Accountability Foundation issued a watchlist of bureaucrats who it claimed could not be trusted to enforce immigration laws.

“That’s unnerving,” says Marcus Hill, president of the Senior Executives Association, which represents some 8,000 senior executives in the federal government. They are the highest-ranking civil servants, who help political appointees carry out their agendas in a lawful manner.

Hill, who spent 38 years in government including as a senior executive, says it’s concerning and offensive that there is doubt about the motives of people who have chosen to serve their country.

“Whether it was a Democratic or Republican administration [that] came in, I understood clearly what my role and responsibilities were in terms of supporting that administration,” he says.

Hill notes that career civil servants swear an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution and to faithfully execute their duties, not to swear allegiance to any party or president.

Source: ‘Apprehensive and fearful’: Federal workers await a dismantling under Trump

Do we really need to chop everybody’s head off? An analysis of Kettl’s “Theory” on Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency

Even after Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency was unveiled, it’s unlikely that we’ll see federal employees fired in large numbers. Such a move would undermine Trump’s ability to get anything done, which would be disastrous for his administration.

If you’re a member of the new government, you won’t want to read about unsafe drugs being released on the public, or not being safe to buy breakfast cereals in the grocery store?

“If you succeed in getting your message across, then you don’t need to chop everybody’s head off,” says Kettl. “You just need to tell everybody that you’re serious about this.”