Donald Trump Taps Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy To Lead Non-Executive Department

President-elect Donald Trump announced tonight that he will nominate billionaire Elon Musk and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy to lead the new Department of Government Operations (DOGE) when he takes office in 2025. The acronym DOGE appears to refer to a digital system. dogecoin currency, of which Musk is a fan.

“These two amazing Americans will pave the way for my administration to dismantle the Business Bureaucracy, cut excessive regulations, cut wasteful spending, and reorganize Federal Agencies,” Trump said in a statement.

The statement did not provide specifics on the nature of the DOGE, but said it will “provide advice and guidance from outside the government” and that it will “cooperate with the White House Office of Management & Budget.”

In September, Trump said he would create a government efficiency commission to be led by Musk. Musk called for a $2 trillion cut in federal spending. By 2023, the government spent $1.7 billion on discretionary funds. In X, Musk is already referring to the departments and areas he would want to cut, including the Department of Education and funding for National Public Radio.

Musk has been one of Trump’s most ardent supporters. During the campaign, he gave nearly $200 million to his political committee, America PAC, which he used to support Trump’s campaign. He also appeared at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, and held town halls across the state to drum up support for the former president. Musk also used his celebrity and X, his own social media platform, to reinforce the Trump campaign’s talking points and encourage fans to vote for Trump. A report from the Center for Counting Digital Hate found that Musk’s political posts on X between the time he endorsed Trump and the end of October received 17.1 billion views.

In his statement on Tuesday, the president-elect said Musk and Ramaswamy will complete their work in the new department “no later than July 4, 2026.”