President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday announced that he will appoint billionaire Elon Musk and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy to head the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) after he takes office in 2025. The acronym DOGE appears to refer to the digital currency Dogecoin, of which Musk is a fan.
In his announcement, Trump said, “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.”
The statement did not provide any details on the nature of DOGE, but said the company would “provide advice and guidance from outside of government” and “work with the White House Office of Management and Budget.”
In September, President Trump announced he would create a Government Efficiency Commission to be led by Musk, who has called for cutting federal spending by $2 trillion. In 2023, the government spent $1.7 billion on discretionary funds. Musk was one of Trump’s most ardent supporters. During the election, he pumped nearly $200 million into his political action committee, America PAC, to support the Trump campaign. He appeared with Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, and held town hall meetings across the state to drum up support for the former president. Musk also used his celebrity and his social media platform, X, to bolster the Trump campaign’s case and encourage supporters to vote for Trump. According to a report by the Digital Hate Countermeasures Center, Musk’s political posts on X received 17.1 billion views from his endorsement of Trump through the end of October.
In a statement on Tuesday, the president-elect said Musk and Ramaswamy would complete their work in the new department “no later than July 4, 2026.”
