Elon Musk’s new DOGE plans are actually old ideas about mass deregulation

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy person laid retired their plans for the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a presently nonexistent entity they accidental volition “cut the national authorities down to size.” Though DOGE isn’t a existent section — and whitethorn successful information conscionable beryllium President-elect Donald Trump’s mode of placating Musk by giving him the quality of a existent occupation — it represents a long-running right-wing effort to gut the civilian service, a program the incoming medication afloat supports.

DOGE could beryllium a mechanics for a Musk shadiness presidency, a nonsense occupation designed to support Musk engaged without giving him existent power, oregon a funny premix of the two. In immoderate case, Musk and Ramaswamy person projected cutting “thousands” of national regulations and determining the “minimum fig of employees required astatine an bureau for it to execute its constitutionally permissible and statutorily mandated functions.” 

Even if these policies aren’t executed by DOGE’s “volunteer” advisers, Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance person enactment distant akin ideas successful the past. Near the extremity of his archetypal term, Trump signed an enforcement order stripping definite national positions from employment protections, a instrumentality Trump and his allies hoped would beryllium utilized to purge dissenters from the ranks of the alleged “deep state.” The order, called Schedule F, was ne'er implemented — but it volition apt beryllium backmost connected the array erstwhile Trump takes bureau successful January.

Vance, too, has raised the anticipation of doing distant with the national bureaucracy. In a 2021 interrogation with right-wing podcaster Jack Murphy, Vance said Trump should “fire each azygous midlevel bureaucrat, each civilian servant successful the administrative state, and regenerate them with our people. And erstwhile the courts halt you, basal earlier the state and say, ‘The main justness has made his ruling. Now fto him enforce it.’”

This clip around, it’s not wide whether the courts would halt Trump, who, successful his archetypal term, nominated much judges to the national judiciary than immoderate of his predecessors and volition inherit an highly affable Supreme Court. And arsenic Musk and Ramaswamy noted successful their mentation of however DOGE volition function, the incoming Trump medication has thing caller astatine its disposal: the caller Supreme Court determination successful Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, the landmark lawsuit that overturned Chevron deference.

“The president owes lawmaking deference to Congress, not bureaucrats heavy wrong national agencies,” Musk and Ramaswamy write. “With a decisive electoral mandate and a 6-3 blimpish bulk connected the Supreme Court, DOGE has a historical accidental for structural reductions successful the national government.”

These suggestions dependable a batch similar a connection to bash distant with the civilian work first floated by Curtis Yarvin, a “neoreactionary” philosopher and self-proclaimed monarchist with ties to Peter Thiel. Back successful 2012, Yarvin enactment distant his ain thought to “reboot” the government, which helium called “Retire All Government Employees,” oregon RAGE. 

Yarvin precocious said connected a podcast that he’s ne'er met Musk — “I don’t deliberation his bodyguards would let it” — and denies helium has immoderate sway implicit different members of Trumpworld, including Vance. (He erstwhile referred to Vance arsenic a “random normie person whom I’ve hardly adjacent met.”) But Yarvin’s ideas person acquisition among members of the incoming Trump administration, including Michael Anton, a chap astatine the right-wing Claremont Institute who is in the running to beryllium Trump’s lawman nationalist information adviser.

Unlike the incoming members of the Trump medication — and unofficial advisers similar Musk and Ramaswamy — Yarvin has made it wide that his eventual extremity is to bash distant with wide ideology altogether. Yarvin isn’t shy astir identifying arsenic a monarchist oregon suggesting that the US should beryllium tally by a “benevolent” dictator. (Nor, for that matter, is Anton.) But Musk’s imaginativeness for DOGE isn’t each that antithetic from RAGE. The extremity is wide deregulation — a weakening of checks and balances and a large chopped to basal authorities services, each successful the sanction of concentrating powerfulness among a tiny radical of plutocrats. 

On X, Musk and his allies person stressed the request for RAGE by highlighting seemingly bizarre projects that person received authorities funding, galore of which are technological studies whose full outgo is simply a fraction of a percent of the wide national budget. But DOGE isn’t conscionable astir cutting costs — it’s astir doing distant with the types of information regulations that Tesla, SpaceX, and Musk’s different companies are regularly accused of flouting. It’s astir redeeming wealth for himself, not for you oregon maine oregon anyone else.