Government Efficiency Department (US)

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      Elon Musk and the Tech Billionaires Steering Trump’s Transition Team

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      The involvement of wealthy investors has made this presidential transition one of the most potentially conflict-ridden in modern history.The week after the November election, President-elect Donald J. Trump gathered his top advisers in the tearoom at his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, to plan the transition to his second-term government.Mr. Trump had brought two of his most valued houseguests to the meeting: the billionaire Tesla boss Elon Musk and the billionaire co-founder of Oracle, Larry Ellison. The president-elect looked around the conference table and issued a joking-not-joking challenge.“I brought the two richest people in the world today,” Mr. Trump told his advisers, according to a person who was in the room. “What did you bring?”Mr. Trump has delighted in a critical addition to his transition team: the Silicon Valley billionaires and millionaires who have been all over the transition, shaping hiring decisions and even conducting interviews for senior-level jobs. Many of those who are not formally involved, like Mr. Ellison, have been happy to sit in on the meetings.Their involvement, to a degree far deeper than previously reported, has made this one of the most potentially conflict-ridden presidential transitions in modern history. It also carries what could be vast implications for the Trump administration’s policies on issues including taxes and the regulation of artificial intelligence, not to mention clashing mightily with the notion that Mr. Trump’s brand of populism is all about helping the working man.The presence of the Silicon Valley crew during critical moments also reflects something larger. Silicon Valley was once seen as a Democratic stronghold, but the new generation of tech leaders — epitomized by Mr. Musk — often has a right-wing ideology and a sense that they have an opportunity now to shift the balance of power in favor of less-fettered entrepreneurship.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Elon Musk recibe un curso intensivo sobre cómo funciona el mundo de Donald Trump

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      La persona más rica del mundo, no muy conocida por su humildad, está aprendiendo la despiadada política cortesana del círculo íntimo de Donald Trump, y su influencia final sigue siendo una incógnita.Durante los primeros 53 años de su vida, Elon Musk apenas pasó tiempo con Donald Trump. Luego, a partir de la noche del 5 de noviembre, básicamente no pasó tiempo sin él.Y así, Musk, más que cualquier otro actor clave en la transición presidencial, se encuentra en un entrenamiento intensivo para aprender la política cortesana del círculo íntimo de Trump. Para la persona más rica del mundo —no muy conocida por su humildad o su paciencia— es un reto de ingeniería social mucho más difícil y menos familiar que la fabricación pesada o la ciencia de cohetes.Abundan las dudas sobre si se graduará en 2028 con un título de cuatro años en Trumpismo: en este momento, en Washington y Silicon Valley, es como un juego de salón especular cuánto durará la relación Musk-Trump. La respuesta, como te dirán los asesores descartados del primer mandato de Trump, puede depender de la capacidad de Musk para aplacar al jefe y mantener un perfil relativamente bajo, pero también para apuñalar a un rival cuando llegue el momento.En resumen, cómo jugar a la política en el mundo de Trump.La mayoría de las personas que rodean actualmente a Trump en la transición son ayudantes curtidos en batallas anteriores o amigos personales desde hace décadas. Musk no es ni lo uno ni lo otro. Lo que aporta en cambio son sus 200 millones de seguidores en X y los aproximadamente 200 millones de dólares que gastó para ayudar a elegir a Trump. Ambas cosas han impresionado mucho al presidente electo. Trump, asombrado por la disposición de Musk a despedir al 80 por ciento del personal de X, ha dicho que el multimillonario de la tecnología ayudará a dirigir un Departamento de Eficiencia Gubernamental junto con Vivek Ramaswamy.Musk mostró a Trump y a legisladores republicanos la sala de control antes del lanzamiento de un cohete de SpaceX el martes, en el sur de Texas. Foto de consorcio de Brandon BellWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Dissecting the DOGE Playbook

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      Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have unveiled their first plans to trim government spending, a blueprint that mirrors how the tech mogul cut costs at Twitter. Layoffs and spending cuts are on Elon Musk’s government agenda.Carlos Barria/ReutersThe Twitter approach to government efficiencyDonald Trump picked Elon Musk and the financier Vivek Ramaswamy to tackle one of his administration’s biggest priorities — reducing the size of the federal government.The two have now shed some light on what Trump has called the Department of Government Efficiency plans to do. They appear to be taking a page from Musk’s playbook for extreme cost-cutting.“We won’t just write reports or cut ribbons,” Musk and Ramaswamy wrote in an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal, addressing skepticism that their initiative, known as DOGE, can achieve. “We’ll cut costs.”How they plan to do it: Musk and Ramaswamy said they would focus on razing agency regulations, laying off government employees and cutting costs, including appropriations for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Planned Parenthood. (That said, Congress created the public broadcasting organization and authorizes its budget.)They’ll lean heavily on two recent Supreme Court rulings, West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency and Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, which together sharply curtailed agencies’ ability to act. “These cases suggest that a plethora of current federal regulations exceed the authority Congress has granted under the law,” Musk and Ramaswamy write.DOGE will present a lengthy list of regulations to gut to Trump, who they say would then be free to use executive action to halt their enforcement and then move to rescind them.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More