Department of Government Elon
26:18 Share

Hey there, Ryan Reynolds here. It's a new year, and you know what that means. No, not the diet. Resolutions.

A way for us all to try and do a little bit better than we did last year. And my resolution, unlike big wireless, is to not be a raging a**hole and raise the price of wireless on you every chance I get. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. $45 upfront payment required, equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three-month plan only. Taxes and fees extra. Speeds lower above 40 gigabytes on unlimited. See mintmobile.com for details.

Build a routine with Ollie that supports your wellness needs, like getting your daily vitamins and minerals with Ollie's Multigummies, or keeping your mood upbeat with all the vitamin D in Hello Happy. Give your gut health some support with probiotics, and wake up feeling refreshed after taking Ollie's sleep. Do wellness on your terms. Find Ollie at a Walmart or Target near you, or at Ollie.com. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

Teddy Schlafer has spent a lot of time lately thinking about Doge, the internet-famous Shiba Inu meme and nascent government overhaul agency of the same name. Teddy, have you been to Doge.gov? I actually did today. It was my second or third time in the last 12 hours. I noticed the Doge Shiba is no longer there. It's gone! What?

If you have somehow escaped the constant posting about it, DOGE stands for Department of Government Efficiency, an Elon Musk brainchild that, as of this week, is real. Teddy has been reporting on its genesis for The New York Times.

A few days ago, we had a nice Shiba dog who was planted on the website of Doge, which I think was basically a very simple page just saying, this is an official government website and that we're going to do major reform. And as of a couple days later, it looks like it just says we're doing major reform and we've got no Shiba dog. And it's a sad thing.

When I was on the site a couple of days ago, there was a cute little cartoon Shiba Inu with an American flag, though I should probably note that the flag was backwards. Whoops. Now there is a black website with a dollar sign that says Department of Government Efficiency and the people voted for major reform.

Doge began as a maybe internet joke and now is taking shape in real life in Washington with the relentless heft of Elon Musk behind it. A joke is something that is not happening. I mean, this is happening. I mean, there's an executive order that came out on Monday evening setting up Doge. There are questions about will it work. There are questions about who's in charge, questions about how it's structured, ethics laws, yada, yada, yada. But that doesn't make it a joke.

Today on the show, no joke here, Doge is real. It's happening. And the man behind it wants big cuts to the federal government. Will that really happen? I'm Lizzie O'Leary, and you're listening to What Next TBD, a show about technology, power, and how the future will be determined. Stick around. Have you heard about double nomics? It's okay if you haven't. It's extremely niche and practiced by Discover.

Here's an example of Doublenomics. Discover automatically doubles the cash back earned on your credit card at the end of your first year with cash back match. That means with Discover, you could turn $150 cash back to $300. It pays to Discover. See terms at discover.com slash credit card.

This podcast is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy. Just drop in some details about yourself and see if you're eligible to save money when you bundle your home and auto policies. The process only takes minutes and it could mean hundreds more in your pockets.

Visit Progressive.com after this episode to see if you could save. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states. If you spin your mind back to the presidential campaign, you might remember then-candidate Donald Trump musing about a government efficiency commission. "...that the suggestion of Elon Musk, who has given me his complete and total endorsement, that's nice. Smart guy."

He knows what he's doing. He knows what he's doing. It's very, very much appreciated. I will create a government efficiency commission tasked with conducting a complete financial and performance audit of the entire federal government and making recommendations for drastic reforms. We need to do it. Musk, for his part, had already tweeted an AI-generated picture of himself at a podium that said, Department of Government Efficiency, and then the caption, I am willing to serve.

To some extent, this is a tale as old as time of Republicans would like to find ways to make government more efficient. You know, sort of the hablem you hear sometimes about we should just run Washington like a business. But it really got personified with Elon Musk. In November, Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy published an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal outlining their plans. They said they were going to focus on regulatory cuts, administrative reduction and cost savings.

You know, I think Musk was always very interested in kind of the cost cutting and in sort of the, you know, the

The dumb thing that you could point out, the federal government was spending $25,000 on. And, you know, Musk loves to talk about these things on Twitter. You know, he would always, you know, I remember for a while he was saying that he and Vivek were going to do a podcast together to highlight dumb spending. While Vivek always seemed more interested in sort of the executive action that could be taken to roll back certain regulations, some of the constitutional questions around what sort of power the president could have to kind of deregulate

And these are things that Musk has not really voiced an interest in as much. So much so that when Vivek...

was talking about Doge, I remember he put out one tweet, I think sometime late last year, where he was like, well, even if we don't really cut the budget that much, it's still Doge. So they've had very different views of kind of the emphases, but in that Wall Street Journal op-ed that they wrote together, they were doing an all-of-the-above strategy. They want to both cut costs and cut regulations. But now, Ramaswamy is leaving Doge amid reports of conflict between the two men.

he has decided to run for governor of Ohio instead, which means Doge is a full Elon operation.

At this point, Elon has basically taken it over. And, you know, it was never really a marriage of equals to begin with, I think it's fair to say, because they're both billionaires, but one of them is a billion billionaire and the other is just a billionaire. You know, Musk's team basically runs this. It's run out of SpaceX headquarters. It doesn't feel like Vivek is that involved. Even before he was booted, it felt like this was Elon's baby and, you know, Vivek was sort of

the sidekick, which is fine. But now, you know, it's basically all Elon because Vivek has been shown the door. I don't want to say he's running for governor as a cover story. I think it's a little bit too strong, but he did not expect to be running for governor now. From everyone I've talked with, the sense I got is that Vivek was

probably planning on doing something later in the year, but he's decided to run earlier. So much so that when he announced he was going to be taking on this role at Doge, he did say that that's because he, you know, in part thought it was so important that he was going to not even run for the U.S. Senate seat in Ohio. That was what he said back in early November when his appointment was announced. So he clearly at the time was prioritizing Doge over his political future. And then just like two or three months later, he's doing the opposite.

One of the things that is striking to me when reading your reporting and other people's is that Elon Musk is bringing in a cast of characters who are close to him and have worked with him on big kind of cost-cutting operations in the past. I'm thinking, you know, Steve Davis, president of the Boring Company. That's exactly what he did when he bought Twitter.

So who else is involved in this operation? Yeah, I mean, Steve Davis is a great example of sort of the type of person who is not famous, but will be or should be. Steve Davis is sort of a longtime Elon Musk lieutenant who's been involved in various kind of

He was very involved in the Twitter takeover when Elon bought the company back a couple years ago. He is now running Doge day to day. He's been joining Elon Musk when he calls experts to ask about the budget. People think of him as the guy in charge. There's another guy named Brad Smith.

who is a healthcare official from the first Trump administration who's also pretty involved. But mostly, you know, people think of Steve as the leader here. Now Doge is going to be structured in this way where there's an administrator who's basically in charge, according to the executive order that Trump released the other day. One question I have is, who's the administrator? Is it Elon Musk or is it Steve Davis?

On Monday, the White House released the executive order that outlined the main points of Doge. We still don't entirely know what the makeup or full remit of the group will be. But we do know from the executive order that Doge will basically take over the existing U.S. digital service, an arm of the government created by the Obama administration to modernize federal tech. What's less clear from the order is how much power it will now have.

One question I have for you, and it might sound kind of weird to listeners, but it's important, is, is Doge in the government or is it outside the government? Because if they're in, they're supposed to follow, like, various disclosure and ethics rules. Although Elon's track record, you know, with, for example, the SEC, doesn't necessarily suggest that he's going to follow all of those rules. So do we know? Are they actually in the government now? Yeah.

They are, and that was after some uncertainty. And essentially, the Muff team originally was looking at doing this outside the government, setting up like a 501c3 or a 501c4. But ultimately, they decided to do an inside-the-government approach where they're taking over the USDS. There are lots of boring, complicated reasons that have to do with ethics laws that are kind of thinking about.

that are governing why the Musk and Ramaswamy teams initially did not want to be inside the government, but they ended up doing it this way. And we're still unpacking here right now why exactly that is. But,

But as of now, these people will all be government employees. Some might end up being what are called special government employees, which have limits on the amount of time that they can spend working for the federal government per year. That's for various ethics reasons as well. But as of now, yes, these are government employees.

In late December, then president-elect, now President Trump, suggested rescinding 10 rules and regulations for every new one issued in his second term. And that seems to fit with this kind of doge rubric of we're going to cut down on regulations. And I guess one of the questions I have is like,

how do they plan to do that? Can they do any of this? I mean, after all, only Congress makes spending cuts. So like, it seems like they can make recommendations, but they don't have the power to just cut stuff. Sure. You know, in terms of how much money the Defense Department spends on X, Y, or Z, a lot of that is, you know,

dictated by power of the purse that's held by Congress. But on regulatory matters, the president has a lot of authority, especially given some recent Supreme Court decisions that kind of show the court believes that a lot of deregulatory things can be just pushed by a man with a pen. That's why I think in part, the Musk and certainly Vivek were pushing deregulation is because they see it as easier, right? And that we'll see if they

are correct because there will be lawsuits and everything is going to be difficult because Democrats want to make things difficult for Doge because they disagree with the fundamental premise here to some extent. I'm not saying it's going to be easy even if they just do deregulation, is my point. But it seems easier than that than the alternative plan of let's just recommend a ton of things which Congress will then ignore. And it's interesting that Doge has wanted to kind of set up congressional caucuses

in both the House and the Senate as a way to basically memorialize the cuts they're pushing for, because they know that you basically need Congress to approve these things if you're actually going to make real cuts. After the break. Wait, isn't this all just a huge conflict of interest for Elon Musk?

Running a small business means you're wearing a lot of hats. Your personal phone becomes your business phone. But as your team grows, that's impossible to manage. That's where Open Phone comes in. Open Phone is the number one business phone system. They'll help you separate your personal life from your growing business. It's affordable and easy to use. For just $15 a month, you get visibility into everything happening with your business phone number. Open Phone works through an app

They use AI-powered call transcripts and summaries, and if you miss a call, automated messages are sent directly to your customer. Whether you're a one-person operation and need help managing calls automatically, or have a large team and need better tools for efficient collaboration, Open Phone is a no-brainer. Right now, Open Phone is offering 20% off of your first six months when you go to openphone.com slash TBD.

That's O-P-E-N-P-H-O-N-E dot com slash TBD for 20% off six months. Openphone.com slash TBD. And if you have existing numbers with another service, Openphone will port them over at no extra charge.

This podcast is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible. Financial geniuses. Monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Because Progressive offers discounts for paying in full, owning a home, and more. Plus, you can count on their great customer service to help you when you need it. So your dollar goes a long way.

Visit Progressive.com to see if you could save on car insurance. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states and situations. Every day, thousands of Comcast engineers and technologists like Kunle put people at the heart of everything they create. In the average household, there are dozens of connected devices. Here in the Comcast family, we're building an integrated in-home Wi-Fi solution for millions of families like my own.

It brings people together in meaningful ways. Kunle and his team are building a Wi-Fi experience that connects one billion devices every year. Learn more about how Comcast is redefining the future of connectivity at comcastcorporation.com slash Wi-Fi.

When you look at the executive order language, it gives Elon Musk, since we're mostly talking about him now, pretty broad access to a lot of different internal government information. Given that he is also a major federal contractor, isn't this a potential conflict of interest?

Of course. I mean, that sort of is the whole point. I mean, the whole point here is to draw on Elon's private sector experience. And that private sector experience is also a conflict of interest, right? It's a feature, not a bug. Right. I mean, there's no one – I feel like using the word conflict of interest underplays it. I mean, conflict of interest is like you discover that your wife has a business relationship with someone you're covering.

Yeah. Like something that's a surprise or maybe ornamental to the task at hand. Like the whole point like here is like Elon Musk knows a ton about, you know, the way that big companies work and, you know, he's the greatest innovator of all time, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. I don't think of interest. I mean. What a naive question. Those aren't the right words. Okay. So there have already been a number of lawsuits filed against

Often by on behalf of groups representing federal employees, for example. Could could those lawsuits stop this work? You know, a lot of those lawsuits are sort of trying to look at kind of the disclosure rules around this. Like, you know, is is is this subject to FOIA or not? There's a law called FACA. You know, choose your harsh sounding. Yes. The Federal Advisory Committee Act. Yeah.

To some extent, you know, this is the effort of good government types who seem to professionally file lawsuits full-time. Kudos to them, and everyone's doing their job, and, you know, it's newsworthy, we report it, but these things are a dime a dozen to some extent, and the Musk team expected them. I mean, Elon tweeted the other day something about along the lines of, like,

we're counting away and let's guess how many we're going to get, you know, makes you want to open a, open up a draft Kings over underline or something like that. I mean, I mean, at this point there was going to be, this is obviously very, very closely scrutinized. It's going to be read by, uh,

Every person who has an agenda is going to try to muck this up. And, and, you know, like who knows, I mean, the courts could, could try to regulate in different ways. I don't think this is going to be buried tomorrow. I think there could be opportunities by the Doge folks to, to retool it or, or brand it differently. Um, and we've already seen ways in which this is different than initially conceived. I mean, when this started with, uh,

Elon and Vivek, as I mentioned earlier, they're very much talking about being an outsider organization. It ended up becoming an inside the government organization. It started out with two leaders. Now it only has one leader. These things can morph and twist and fit into whatever size box they might need to. But we'll see what happens.

One of the reasons that I was asking about lawsuits is I would also imagine that in this universe of suits, we may also see lawsuits about the cutting of regulations. When you go back to the first Trump administration, I was looking at a tally of

of lawsuits from some of those regulation rescissions. And the Trump administration won those suits only 22% of the time, which I thought was interesting. So there's a future that one could perceive in which they make a lot of cuts, then the cuts get argued in court, and then they get undone. And I guess that's kind of one of the questions that I have for you is,

Do the folks behind this who are coming in with a very different mindset than a traditional Washington mindset, like, are they here for minute legal battles or are they here for the big picture and a very different vision of government than I think...

many long time Washington hands imagine. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, like, I think there's an element to the Trump administration that includes parts of both of these parties, right? I mean, it's Elon Musk, right?

a serious you know small government crusader as he calls himself who cares passionately like paul ryan does about reducing the size of government or does he just think it's kind of like a fun tagline same question for trump right i mean i mean like you know trump uh is not really a small government crusader i mean he's somebody who to some extent you know is politically popular enough to win because he recognizes that some of the small government stuff is very unpopular like a

criticism of Doge or of the ambition of Doge might be that they don't really want to approach social security reform because Trump himself has said that he doesn't want to cut social security, which is not, of course, a small government position. So to what extent are they kind of tweaking this screw and that screw and trying to get everything just right? Or are they going to take these big swings at reducing the defense budget by 50%? I mean, these are all questions that

will be answered in due time, don't worry. But certainly it makes you wonder what kind of the intersection of policy and politics will be here.

That's so interesting to hear you say, because I, you know, my eyes and ears perk up when I hear you say Paul Ryan, because it harkens back to the era of budget commissions that I covered, right? Like, I covered the Simpson-Bowles commission in 2011, and that was the blue ribbon, bipartisan, you know, we take a long time, we have many hearings, right?

Kind of thing. And nothing really came of it. So why do they say they want to do it this way? Why break with that way of doing things? You talk to these guys. What is their animating reason that they think this way will work?

I think there's different people involved. You know, Paul Ryan is not running this. I mean, I think there's an inflection of Silicon Valley that is all over this, right? This belief, as juvenile as it may be, or naive as it may be, that they can do it. And I don't know that they're wrong. I mean, there's this...

that, you know, tech can do anything. And, you know, if we use, you know, artificial intelligence in part, but also just like the broader first principles thinking that tech leaders have to rethink systems and, you know, question things that have been unquestioned. I mean, I know I sound like I'm speaking in aphorisms or euphemisms or, you know, techisms, but like the,

That is a lot of the guiding ethos of the Bay Area, and that's why I think the people involved are different than Paul Ryan. I mean, yes, they voted for Mitt Romney and Ryan, or maybe they didn't actually, but they share some of what Paul Ryan would say. But this is not the Heritage Foundation. This is a uniquely kind of Silicon Valley view of the world that is coming to bear. Teddy Schleifer, thank you as always for coming on. You bet.

Tati Schleifer covers politics and rich people for The New York Times. Before we go, I've got a little announcement. We are launching something called The Discourse. It's a new bonus feature available only to Slate Plus members. Our first episode features Slate's Nitish Pawar talking about, um, salutes? And we're going to be talking about

and the Broligarchy. Slate Plus members can already hear it. And if you're not a member and you want to listen, all you got to do is join Slate Plus. You can do that directly from the What Next TBD show page on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or visit slate.com forward slash TBD Plus to get access wherever you listen.

All right, that is it for our show today. What Next TBD is produced by Patrick Fort and Shana Roth. Our show is edited by Evan Campbell. TBD is part of the larger What Next family. And we will be back on Sunday with another episode. I'm Lizzie O'Leary. Thanks for listening.